Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/340

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326
ANIMISM.

not disturb the Indian's rest and comfort, but the work of evil spirits when they do.' Uauüloa and Locozy, the good and evil deity of the Yumanas, live above the earth and toward the sun; the Evil Deity is feared by these savages, but the Good Deity will come to eat fruit with the departed and take their souls to his dwelling, wherefore they bury the dead each doubled up in his great earthen pot, with fruit in his lap, and looking toward the sunrise. Even the rude Botocudos are thought to recognize antagonistic principles of good and evil in the persons of the Sun and Moon.[1] This idea has especial interest from its correspondence on the one hand with that of the Iroquois tribes, and on the other with that of the comparatively civilized Muyscas of Bogota, whose good deity is unequivocally a mythic Sun, thwarted in his kindly labours for man by his wicked wife Huythaca the Moon.[2] The native religion of Chili is said to have placed among the subaltern deities Meulen, the friend of man, and Huecuvu the bad spirit and author of evil. These people can hardly have learnt from Christianity to conceive their evil spirit as simply and fully the general cause of misfortune: if the earth quakes, Huecuvu has given it a shock; if a horse tires, Huecuvu has ridden him; if a man falls sick, Huecuvu has sent the disease into his body, and no man dies but that Huecuvu suffocates him.[3]

In Africa, again, allowing for Moslem influence, dualism is not ill represented in native religion. An old account from Loango describes the natives as theoretically recognizing Zambi the supreme deity, creator of good and lover of justice, and over against him Zambi-anbi the destroyer, the counsellor of crime, the author of loss and accident, of disease and death. But when it comes to actual worship, as

  1. Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. pp. 327, 485, 583, 645, see 247, 393, 427, 696. See also J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 259, &c., 403, 423; D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. i. p. 405, vol. ii. p. 257; Falkner, 'Patagonia,' p. 114; Musters, 'Patagonians,' p. 179; Fitzroy, 'Voy. of Adventure and Beagle,' vol. i. pp. 180, 190.
  2. Piedrahita, 'Hist. de Neuv. Granada,' part i. book i. ch. 3.
  3. Molina, 'Hist. of Chili,' vol. ii. p. 84; Febres, 'Diccionario Chileño,' s.v.