[152] Cieza de León , chh. vi-viii (pp. 13, 16, quoted).
[153] Garcilasso de la Vega, bk. i, ch. xviii.
[154] The argument for the antiquity of man in South America rests mainly upon the discoveries and theories of Ameghino, especially, La Antigüedad del hombre en la Plata (2 vols., Buenos Aires and Paris, 1880) and artt. in AnMB, who is followed by other Argentinian savants. Ales Hrdlicka, Early Man in South America (52 BBE, Washington, 1912), examines the claims made for the several discoveries and uniformly rejects the assumption of their great age, in which opinion he is generally followed by North American anthropologists; as cf. Wissler, The American Indian (New York, 1917). The theory favored by Hrdlicka and others is of the peopling of the Americas by successive waves of immigrants from north-eastern Asia, with possible minor intrusions of Oceanic peoples along the Pacific coasts of the southern continent.
[155] The sketch of South American ethnography in d'Orbigny's L'Homme américain is, of course, now superseded in a multitude of details; it appears, however, to conform, in broad lines, to the deductions of later students. In addition to d'Orbigny and Schmidt (ZE xlv, 1913), Brinton, The American Race, Beuchat, Manuel, and Wissler, The American Indian, present the most available ethnographic analyses.
[156] "Linguistic Stocks of South American Indians," in AA, new series, xv (1913); also, Wissler, The American Indian, pp. 381-85, listing eighty-four stocks. It must be borne in mind, however, that the tendency of minute study is eventually to diminish the number of linguistic stocks having no detectable relationships, and that, in any case, classifications based upon cultural grade are more important for the student of mythology than are those based upon language alone.
[157] Brett [a], p. 36; other quotations from this work are from pp. 374, 401, 403.
[158] King Blanco, pp. 63-64. The lack of significant early authorities for the mythologies of the region of Guiana and the Orinoco (Gumilla is as important as any) is compensated by the careful work of later observers of the native tribes, especially of Guiana. Among these, Humboldt, Sir Richard and Robert H. Schomburgk, and Brett, in the early and middle years of the nineteenth century, and im Thurn, at a later period, hold first place, while the contributions of van Coll, in Anthropos ii, iii (1907, 1908), are no less noteworthy. Latest of all is Walter Roth's "Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians," in 30 ARBE (1915), which, as a careful study of the myth-literature of a South American group, stands in a class by itself; it is furnished with a careful bibliography. The reader will understand that the intimate relation between the Antillean and Continental Carib (and, to a less extent, Arawakan) ideas brings the subject-matter of this chapter into direct connexion with that of Chapter I; while it should also be obvious that the Orinoco region is only separated from the Amazonian for convenience, and that Chapter X is virtually but a further study of the same level and type of thought. The bibliographies of Chh. I, VI, and X are supplementary, for this same region, to that given for Chapter VIII.
[159] Humboldt (Ross), iii. 69; im Thurn, pp. 365-66.
[160] Surely one may indulge a wry smile when told that "heavenly father" and "creator" are no attributes of God, and may be reasonably justified in preferring Sir Richard Schomburgk's judgment, where he says (i. 170): "Almost all stocks of British Guiana are one in their religious convictions, at least in the main; the Creator of the world and of mankind is an infinitely exalted being, but his energy is so occupied in ruling and maintaining the earth that he can give no special care to individual men." This unusual reason for the indifference of the Supreme Being toward the affairs of ordinary men is probably an inference of the author's. Roth commences his study of Guiana Indian beliefs with a chapter entitled, "No Evidence of Belief in a Supreme Being," and begins his discussion with the statement: "Careful investigation forces one to the conclusion that, on the evidence, the native tribes of Guiana had no idea of a Supreme Being in the modern conception of the term," quoting evidence, from Gumilla and others, which to the present writer seems to point in just the opposite direction. Of course, the phrase "in the modern conception of the term" is the key to much difference in judgement. If it means that savages have no conception of a Divine Ens, Esse, Actus Purus, or the like, definable by highly abstract attributes, ça va sans dire; but if the intention is to say that there is no primitive belief in a luminous Sky Father, creator and ruler, good on the whole, though not preoccupied with the small details of earthly and human affairs, such a conclusion is directly opposed to all evidence, early and late, North American and South American, missionary and anthropological. Cf. Mythology of All Races, x, Note 6, and references there given; and, in the present volume, not only Ch. I, [iii] (Ramon Pane is surely among the earliest), but also—passing over the numerous allusions in descriptions of the pantheons of the more advanced tribes (Chh. [II-VII])—Ch. IX, [iii] (early and late for the low Brazilian tribes); Ch. X, [ii], [iii], [iv].
[161] Sir Richard Schomburgk, ii. 319-20; i. 170-72. Roth gives legends from many sources touching these deities and others of a similar character.