ed into him and gave him life. ("Report of the International
Expedition to Point Barrow" (Washington, 1885), page 47.) Other
Esquimaux of Alaska relate how the Raven made the first woman out of
clay to be a companion to the first man; he fastened water-grass to the
back of the head to be hair, flapped his wings over the clay figure,
and it arose, a beautiful young woman. (E.W. Nelson, "The Eskimo about
Bering Strait", "Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology", Part I. (Washington, 1899), page 454.) The Acagchemem
Indians of California said that a powerful being called Chinigchinich
created man out of clay which he found on the banks of a lake; male and
female created he them, and the Indians of the present day are their
descendants. (Friar Geronimo Boscana, "Chinigchinich", appended to (A.
Robinson's) "Life in California" (New York, 1846), page 247.) A priest
of the Natchez Indians in Louisiana told Du Pratz "that God had kneaded
some clay, such as that which potters use and had made it into a little
man; and that after examining it, and finding it well formed, he blew up
his work, and forthwith that little man had life, grew, acted, walked,
and found himself a man perfectly well shaped." As to the mode in which
the first woman was created, the priest had no information, but thought
she was probably made in the same way as the first man; so Du Pratz
corrected his imperfect notions by reference to Scripture. (M. Le Page
Du Pratz, "The History of Louisiana" (London, 1774), page 330.) The
Michoacans of Mexico said that the great god Tucapacha first made man
and woman out of clay, but that when the couple went to bathe in a river
they absorbed so much water that the clay of which they were composed
all fell to pieces. Then the creator went to work again and moulded them
afresh out of ashes, and after that he essayed a third time and made
them of metal. This last attempt succeeded. The metal man and woman
bathed in the river without falling to pieces, and by their union they
became the progenitors of mankind. (A. de Herrera, "General History of
the vast Continent and Islands of America", translated into English by
Capt. J. Stevens (London, 1725, 1726), III. 254; Brasseur de Bourbourg,
"Histoire des Nations Civilisees du Mexique et de l'Amerique-Centrale"
(Paris, 1857--1859), III. 80 sq; compare id. I. 54 sq.)

According to a legend of the Peruvian Indians, which was told to a
Spanish priest in Cuzco about