[85-3] The Navajos, Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, iv. p. 89.
[85-4] The Quichés, Ximenes, Or. de los Indios, p. 79.
[85-5] The Iroquois, Müller, Amer. Urreligionen, p. 109.
[85-6] For these myths see Sepp, Das Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung für das Christenthum, i. p. 111 sqq. The interpretation is of course my own.
[87-1] Peter Martyr, De Reb. Ocean., Dec. iii., lib. ix. p. 195; Colon, 1574.
[87-2] Ibid., Dec. iii., lib. x. p. 202.
[87-3] Florida was also long supposed to be the site of this wondrous spring, and it is notorious that both Juan Ponce de Leon and De Soto had some lurking hope of discovering it in their expeditions thither. I have examined the myth somewhat at length in Notes on the Floridian Peninsula, its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities, pp. 99, 100: Philadelphia, 1859.
[88-1] Sahagun, Hist. de la Nueva España, lib. iii. cap. iii.
[88-2] Le Livre Sacré des Quichés, Introd., p. clviii.
[89-1] Memorial de Tecpan Atitlan, in Brasseur, Hist. du Mexique, i. p. 167. The derivation of Tulan, or Tula, is extremely uncertain. The Abbé Brasseur sees in it the ultima Thule of the ancient geographers, which suits his idea of early American history. Hernando De Soto found a village of this name on the Mississippi, or near it. But on looking into Gallatin’s vocabularies, tulla turns out to be the Choctaw word for stone, and as De Soto was then in the Choctaw country, the coincidence is explained at once. Buschmann, who spells it Tollan, takes it from tolin, a rush, and translates, juncetum, Ort der Binsen. Ueber die Aztekischen Orstnamen, p. 682. Those who have attempted to make history from these mythological fables have been much puzzled about the location of this mystic land. Humboldt has placed it on the northwest coast, Cabrera at Palenque, Clavigero north of Anahuac, etc. etc. Aztlan, literally, the White Land, is another name of wholly mythical purport, which it would be equally vain to seek on the terrestrial globe. In the extract in the text, the word translated God is Qabavil, an old word for the highest god, either from a root meaning to open, to disclose, or from one of similar form signifying to wonder, to marvel; literally, therefore, the Revealer, or the Wondrous One (Vocab. de la Lengua Quiché, p. 209: Paris, 1862).