In both continents burnt-offerings were sacrificed to the gods. In both continents the priests divined the future from the condition of the internal organs of the man or animal sacrificed. (Ibid., pp. 214, 226.) In both continents the future was revealed by the flight of birds and by dreams. In Peru and Mexico there were colleges of augurs, as in Rome, who practised divination by watching the movements and songs of birds. (Ibid., p. 261.)
Animals were worshipped in Central America and on the banks of the Nile.
(Ibid., p. 259.)
The Ojibbeways believed that the barking of a fox was ominous of ill. (Ibid., p. 225). The peasantry of Western Europe have the same belief as to the howling of a dog.
The belief in satyrs, and other creatures half man and half animal, survived in America. The Kickapoos are Darwinians. "They think their ancestors had tails, and when they lost them the impudent fox sent every morning to ask how their tails were, and the bear shook his fat sides at the joke." (Ibid., p. 232.) Among the natives of Brazil the father cut a stick at the wedding of his daughter; "this was done to cut off the tails of any future grandchildren." (Tylor, vol. i., p. 384.)
Jove, with the thunder-bolts in his hand, is duplicated in the Mexican
god of thunder, Mixcoatl, who is represented holding a bundle of arrows.
"He rode upon a tornado, and scattered the lightnings." (Dorman, "Prim.
Superst.," p. 98.)
Dionysus, or Bacchus, is represented by the Mexican god Texcatzoncatl, the god of wine. (Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 418.)
Atlas reappears in Chibchacum, the deity of the Chibchas; he bears the world on his shoulders, and when be shifts the burden from one shoulder to another severe earthquakes are produced. (Bollært, pp. 12, 13.)
Deucalion repeopling the world is repeated in Xololt, who, after the destruction of the world, descended to Mictlan, the realm of the dead, and brought thence a bone of the perished race. This, sprinkled with blood, grew into a youth, the father of the present race. The Quiche hero-gods, Hunaphu and Xblanque, died; their bodies were burnt, their bones ground to powder and thrown into the waters, whereupon they changed into handsome youths, with the same features as before. (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 193.)
Witches and warlocks, mermaids and mermen, are part of the mythology of the American tribes, as they were of the European races. (Ibid., p. 79.) The mermaid of the Ottawas was "woman to the waist and fair;" thence fish-like. (Ibid., p. 278.)
The snake-locks of Medusa are represented in the snake-locks of
At-otarho, an ancient culture-hero of the Iroquois.