[1897] Bancroft (iii. 136) says: “It does not appear, notwithstanding Mr. Squier’s assertion to the contrary, that the serpent was actually worshipped either in Yucatan or Mexico.” Cf. Brinton’s Myths, ch. 4; Chas. S. Wake’s Serpent Worship (London, 1888); and J. G. Bourke’s Snake-dance of the Moquis of Arizona; being a narrative of a journey from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the villages of the Moqui Indians of Arizona, with a description of the manners and customs of this peculiar people, to which is added a brief dissertation upon serpent-worship in general, with an account of the tablet dance of the Pueblo of Santo Domingo, New Mexico, etc. (London, 1884).
[1898] Brinton (Myths, etc., 141) declares sun-worship, which some investigators have made the base of all primitive religions, to be but a “short and easy method with mythology,” and that “no one key can open all the arcana of symbolism.” He refers to D’Orbigny (L’Homme Américain), Müller (Amer. Urreligionen), and Squier (Serpent Symbol) as supporting the opposing view. We may find like supporters of the sun as a central idea in Schoolcraft, Tylor, Brasseur. Cf. Bancroft’s Native Races (iii. 114) in opposition to Brinton.
[1899] This monotheism is denied by Brinton (Myths of the New World, 52). “Of monotheism, either as displayed in the one personal definite God of the Semitic races, or in the dim pantheistic sense of the Brahmins, there was not a single instance on the American continent,”—the Iroquois “Neu” and “Hawaneu,” which, as Brinton says, have deceived Morgan and others, being but the French “Dieu” and “Le bon Dieu” rendered in Indian pronunciation (Myths of the New World, p. 53). The aborigines instituted, however, in two instances, the worship of an immaterial god, one among the Quichuas of Peru and another at Tezcuco (Ibid. p. 55).
Bandelier (Archæol. Tour, 185), examining the Hist. de los Méxicanos por sus Pinturas (Anales del Museo, ii. 86), Motolinía, Gómara, Sahagún, Tobar, and Durán, finds no trace of monotheism till we come to Acosta. Torquemada speaks of supreme gods; and Bandelier thinks that Ixtlilxochitl, in conveying the idea of a single god, evidently distorts and disfigures Torquemada.
Bancroft (iii. 198) accords honesty to Ixtlilxochitl’s account of the religion of the Tezcucan ruler Nezahualcoyotl, as reaching the heights of Mexican monotheistic conception, because he thinks his descendants, if he had fabled, would never have ended his description with so pagan a statement as that which makes the Tezcucan recognize the sun as his father and the earth as his mother.
Max Müller tells us that we should distinguish between monotheism and henotheism, which is the temporary preeminence of one god over the host of gods, and which was as near monotheism as the American aborigines came.
[1900] He also masses the evidence which shows, as he thinks, that “on Catholic missions has followed the debasement, and on Protestant missions the destruction, of the Indian race.” Amer. Hero-Myths, pp. 206, 238.
[1901] Unfortunately, Brinton enforces this view and others with a degree of confidence that does not help him to convince the cautious reader, as when he speaks of the opinions of those who disagree with him as “having served long enough as the last refuge of ignorance” (Amer. Hero-Myths, 145).
[1902] The whole question of comparative mythology involves in its broad aspects the subject of American myths. The literature of this general kind is large, but reference may be made to Girard de Rialle’s La Mythologie Comparée (Paris, 1878); for the idea of God, Dawson’s Fossil Men, ch. 9 and 10; Lubbock’s Origin of Civilization, ch. 4, 5, 6; J. P. Lesley’s Man’s origin and destiny, ch. 10; and for the geographical distribution of myths, Tylor’s Early Hist. of Mankind, ch. 12; Max Müller’s Chips, vol. ii.; and in a general way, Brinton’s Religious sentiment, its source and aim (N. Y., 1876). Reference may also be made to Joly’s Man before Metals, ch. 7; Dabry de Thiersant’s Origine des indiens (Paris, 1883); and G. Brühl’s Culturvölker Alt-Amerikas (Cincinnati, 1876-78), ch. 10 and 19. Brinton (Myths, 210) tracks the Deluge myth among the Indians, and Bancroft gives many instances of it (Native Races, v., index). Brinton thinks a paper by Charencey, “Le Déluge d’après les traditions indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord,” in the Revue Américaine, a help for its extracts, but complains of its uncritical spirit.
We find sufficient data of the aboriginal belief in the future life both in Bancroft’s final chapter (vol. iii. part i.) and in Brinton’s Myths, ch. 9. Brinton delivered an address on the “Journey of the soul,” which is printed in the Proceedings (Jan., 1883) of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia.