not said, or saying, had not agreed.[77-1]

It is a shade more complex when we come to the Creeks. They told of four
men who came from the four corners of the earth, who brought them the
sacred fire, and pointed out the seven sacred plants. They were called
the Hi-you-yul-gee. Having rendered them this service, the kindly
visitors disappeared in a cloud, returning whence they came. When
another and more ancient legend informs us that the Creeks were at first
divided into four clans, and alleged a descent from four female
ancestors, it will hardly be venturing too far to recognize in these
four ancestors the four friendly patrons from the cardinal points.[78-1]

The ancient inhabitants of Haiti, when first discovered by the
Spaniards, had a similar genealogical story, which Peter Martyr relates
with various excuses for its silliness and exclamations at its
absurdity. Perhaps the fault lay less in its lack of meaning than in his
want of insight. It was to the effect that men lived in caves, and were
destroyed by the parching rays of the sun, and were destitute of means
to prolong their race, until they caught and subjected to their use four
women who were swift of foot and slippery as eels. These were the
mothers of the race of men. Or again, it was said that a certain king
had a huge gourd which contained all the waters of the earth; four
brothers, who coming into the world at one birth had cost their mother
her life, ventured to the gourd to fish, picked it up, but frightened by
the old king's approach, dropped it on the ground, broke it into
fragments, and scattered the waters over the earth, forming the seas,
lakes, and rivers, as they now are. These brothers in time became the
fathers of a nation, and to them they traced their lineage.[78-2] With
the previous examples before our eyes, it asks no vivid fancy to see in
these quaternions once more the four winds, the bringers of rain, so
swift and so slippery.

The Navajos are a rude tribe north of Mexico. Yet even they have an
allegory to the effect that when the first man came up from the ground
under the figure of the moth-worm, the four spirits of the cardinal
points were already there, and hailed him with the exclamation, "Lo, he
is of our race."[79-1] It is a poor and feeble effort to tell the same
old story.

The Haitians were probably relatives of the Mayas of Yucatan. Certainly
the latter shared their ancestral legends, for in an ancient manuscript
found b