apa as being distinctly the hero-myth of the Qquichuas. He was also the
hero-god of the Aymaras, and about him, says Father Ludovico Bertonio,
"they to this day relate many fables and follies." _Vocabulario de la
Lengua Aymara_, s.v. Another name he bore in Aymara was _Ecaco_, which in
that language means, as a common noun, an ingenious, shifty man of many
plans (_Bertonio, Vocabulario_, s.v.). "Thunnupa," as Bertonio spells it,
does not lend itself to any obvious etymology in Aymara, which is further
evidence that the name was introduced from the Qquichua. This is by no
means a singular example of the identity of religious thought and terms
between these nations. In comparing the two tongues, M. Alcide D'Orbigny
long since observed: "On retrouve meme a peu pres un vingtieme des mots
qui ont evidemment la meme origine, surtout ceux qui expriment les idees
religieuses." _L'Homme Americain, considere sous ses Rapports
Physiologiques et Moraux_, Tome i, p. 322 (Paris, 1839). This author
endeavors to prove that the Qquichua religion was mainly borrowed from the
Aymaras, and of the two he regards the latter as the senior in
civilization. But so far as I have been able to study the mythology of the
Aymaras, which is but very superficially, on account of the lack of
sources, it does not seem to be entitled to this credit.]

He tells us that at a very remote period, shortly after the country of
Peru had been populated, there came from Lake Titicaca to the tribes an
elderly man with flowing beard and abundant white hair, supporting himself
on a staff and dressed in wide-spreading robes. He went among the people,
calling them his sons and daughters, relieving their infirmities and
teaching them the precepts of wisdom.

Often, however, he met the fate of so many other wise teachers, and was
rejected and scornfully entreated by those whom he was striving to
instruct. Swift retribution sometimes fell upon such stiff-necked
listeners. Thus he once entered the town of Yamquesupa, the principal
place in the province of the South, and began teaching the inhabitants;
but they heeded him not, and seized him, and with insult and blows drove
him from the town, so that he had to sleep in the open fields. Thereupon
he cursed their town, and straightway it sank into the earth with all its
inhabitants, and the depression was filled with water, and all were
drowned. To this day it is known as the lake of Yamquesupa, and all the
people about ther