ous emblem among this
people. It appeared in their sacred paintings, and especially, they
erected one over the grave of a person who had died from the bite of a
serpent.

A little careful investigation will permit us to accept these statements
as quite true, and yet give them a very different interpretation.

That this culture-hero arrives from the East and returns to the East are
points that at once excite the suspicion that he was the personification
of the Light. But when we come to his names, no doubt can remain. These
were various, but one of the most usual was _Chimizapagua_, which, we are
told, means "a messenger from _Chiminigagua_." In the cosmogonical myths
of the Muyscas this was the home or source of Light, and was a name
applied to the demiurgic force. In that mysterious dwelling, so their
account ran, light was shut up, and the world lay in primeval gloom. At a
certain time the light manifested itself, and the dawn of the first
morning appeared, the light being carried to the four quarters of the
earth by great black birds, who blew the air and winds from their beaks.
Modern grammarians profess themselves unable to explain the exact meaning
of the name _Chiminigagua_, but it is a compound, in which, evidently,
appear the words _chie_, light, and _gagua_, Sun.[1]

[Footnote 1: Uricoechea says, "al principio del mundo la luz estaba
encerrada en una cosa que no podian describir i que llamaban
_Chiminigague_, o El Criador." _Gramatica de la Lengua Chibcha_, Introd.,
p. xix. _Chie_ in this tongue means light, moon, month, honor, and is also
the first person plural of the personal pronoun. _Ibid_., p. 94. Father
Simon says _gagua_ is "el nombre del mismo sol," though ordinarily Sun is
_Sua_.]

Other names applied to this hero-god were Nemterequeteba, Bochica, and
Zuhe, or Sua, the last mentioned being also the ordinary word for the Sun.
He was reported to have been of light complexion, and when the Spaniards
first arrived they were supposed to be his envoys, and were called _sua_
or _gagua_, just as from the memory of a similar myth in Peru they were
addressed as Viracochas.

In his form as Bochica, he is represented as the supreme male divinity,
whose female associate is the Rainbow, Cuchaviva, goddess of rains and
waters, of the fertility of the fields, of medicine, and of child-bearing
in women, a relationship which I have already explained.[1]

[Footnote 1: The principal authority for the mythology of