Like all the hero-gods, he left behind him the well-remembered promise
that at some future day he should return to them, and that a race of men
should come in time, to gather them into towns and rule them in peace.[1]
These predictions were carefully noted by the missionaries, and regarded
as the "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" of the advent of
Christianity; but to me they bear too unmistakably the stamp of the
light-myth I have been following up in so many localities of the New World
for me to entertain a doubt about their origin and meaning.

[Footnote 1: "Ilium quoque pollicitum fuisse, se aliquando has regiones
revisurum." Father Nobrega, _ubi supra_. For the other particulars I have
given see Nicolao del Techo, _Historia Provinciae Paraquariae_, Lib. vi,
cap. iv, "De D. Thomae Apostoli itineribus;" and P. Antonio Ruiz,
_Conquista Espiritual hecha por los Religiosos de la Compania de Jesus en
las Provincias del Paraguay, Parana, Uruguay y Tape_, fol. 29, 30 (4to.,
Madrid, 1639). The remarkable identity of the words relating to their
religious beliefs and observances throughout this widespread group of
tribes has been demonstrated and forcibly commented on by Alcide
D'Orbigny, _L'Homme Americain_, vol. ii, p. 277. The Vicomte de Porto
Seguro identifies Zume with the _Cemi_ of the Antilles, and this etymology
is at any rate not so fanciful as most of those he gives in his
imaginative work, _L'Origine Touranienne des Americaines Tupis-Caribes_,
p. 62 (Vienna, 1876).]

I have not yet exhausted the sources from which I could bring evidence of
the widespread presence of the elements of this mythical creation in
America. But probably I have said enough to satisfy the reader on this
point. At any rate it will be sufficient if I close the list with some
manifest fragments of the myth, picked out from the confused and generally
modern reports we have of the religions of the Athabascan race. This stem
is one of the most widely distributed in North America, extending across
the whole continent south of the Eskimos, and scattered toward the warmer
latitudes quite into Mexico. It is low down in the intellectual scale, its
component tribes are usually migratory savages, and its dialects are
extremely synthetic and of difficult phonetics, requiring as many as
sixty-five letters for their proper orthography. No wonder, therefore,
that we have but limited knowledge of their mental life.

Conspicuous in their myths is the tale