Brinton dissents to D’Orbigny’s view in his L’homme Américaine, that the Quichua religion is mainly borrowed from the older mythology of the Aymaras.
Francisco de Avila’s “Errors and False Gods of the Indians of Huarochiri” (1608), edited by Markham for the Hakluyt Society in the volume called Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, is a treatment of a part of the subject.
Adolf Bastian’s Ein Jahr auf Reisen—Kreuzfahrten zum Sammelbehuf aus Transatlantischen Feldern der Ethnologie, being the first volume of his Die Culturländer des Alten America (Berlin, 1878), has a section “Aus Religion and Sitte des Alten Peru.”
[VI.]
ARCHÆOLOGICAL MUSEUMS AND PERIODICALS.
By the Editor.
The oldest of existing American societies dealing with the scientific aspects of knowledge is the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, whose Transactions began in 1769, and made six volumes to 1809. A second series was begun in 1818.[1914] What are called the Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee make two volumes (1819, 1838), the first of which contains contributions by Heckewelder and P. S. Duponceau on the history and linguistics of the Lenni Lenape. Its Proceedings began in 1838. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was instituted at Boston in 1780, a part of its object being “to promote and encourage the knowledge of the antiquities of America,”[1915] and its series of Memoirs began in 1783,[1916] and its Proceedings in 1846. These societies have only, as a rule, incidentally, and not often till of late years, illustrated in their publications the antiquities of the new world; but the American Antiquarian Society was founded in 1812 at Worcester, Mass., by Isaiah Thomas, with the express purpose of elucidating this department of American history. It began the Archæologia Americana in 1820, and some of the volumes are still valuable, though they chiefly stand for the early development by Atwater, Gallatin, and others of study in this direction. In the first volume is an account of the origin and design of the society, and this is also set forth in the memoir of Thomas prefixed to its reprint of his History of Printing in America, which is a part of the series. The Proceedings of the society were begun in 1849, and they have contained some valuable papers on Central American subjects. The Boston Society of Natural History[1917] published the Boston Journal of Natural History from 1834 to 1863, and in 1866 began its Memoirs. Col. Whittlesey gave in its first volume a paper on the weapons and military character of the race of the mounds, and subsequent volumes have had other papers of an archæological nature; but they have formed a small part of its contributions. Its Proceedings have of late years contained some of the best studies of palæolithic man. The American Ethnological Society, founded by Gallatin (New York), began its exclusive work in a series of Transactions (1845-53, vols. i., ii., and one number of vol. iii.), but it was not of long continuance, though it embraced among its contributors the conspicuous names of Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Catherwood, Squier, Rafn, S. G. Morton, J. R. Bartlett, and others. Its Bulletin was not continued beyond a single volume (1860-61).[1918] The society was suspended in 1871.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science began its publications with the Proceedings of its Philadelphia meeting in 1848. Questions of archæology formed, however, but a small portion of its inquiries[1919] till the formation of a section on Anthropology a few years ago.