Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/658

Rh In an unpublished Spanish manuscript, Historia de Texas, to which no author's name is attached, but which was evidently written by a Franciscan friar about the year 1781, are found some curious details respecting the Texas Indians. From this manuscript I have translated the following interesting myth describing the origin of a supreme being said to have been recognized by them:

"In the whole nation of the Tasinais, or Texas, as they are now called, is comprised, under the same language, more than fourteen or fifteen subdivisions, holding belief in the existence of a great chief who lives in the sky, whom they all call the same, Caddi-Ayo, that is to say, the chief of above or on high, and to whom they attribute the creation of human beings, although (their tradition being full of contradictions) they suppose them to have existed before the origin of their creator, which they relate in the following manner:

In the beginning of the world there was only one woman, who had two daughters; one of these was a maiden and the other was pregnant. (It did not embarrass them that they had no account of a man by whom the mother and daughter could have become pregnant.) One day when the two girls were alone, and the pregnant one was lying in the lap of the maiden, the former was taken away by a strange event. It so happened that suddenly there appeared before them the Caddaja, or Devil, in the form of a gigantic man, of ferocious aspect, and with his forehead adorned with horns so enormous that their points were lost to view. At the moment when he showed himself to them, he seized the pregnant girl and tore her in pieces with his claws and quickly devoured her. The maiden, fleeing from a similar fate, availed herself of this interval and climbed to the top of a great tree. The hunger of the devil not being satisfied by having swallowed one girl, he sought the other to give her the same doom. Having seen her among the branches, he tried to climb them, but was not able, and without observing that he could knock her off with his horns, he applied his claws and teeth to cut the tree off at the roots so as to capture her. The maiden being in this sad perplexity, and no other means of escape offering itself, she plunged precipitately into a deep stream that ran near by. This did not cause the Caddaja to despair of capturing her, and to accomplish it he commenced to drink the water in order to exhaust the stream and leave it dry, so as to offer to his voracity this second victim; but swimming between wind and water the maiden mocked his cunning and escaped the danger by leaving that spot and reaching land at her own place, where she found her mother, to whom she related the tragic end of her sister. Together the two started immediately to the place of the misfortune, and the mother, examining the trail of blood of her massacred child, found one drop within the cup of an acorn. She took it up with care and covered it with another cup from the same fruit, then warmed it in her bosom and took it to her hut. She put it in a small earthen vessel, and when it was tightly closed she placed it in a sheltered corner of the room in which she slept. That night she heard within the vessel a noise like a light tapping or scratching. As soon as it was daylight she went to examine it and found that from the drop of blood there was formed a male child, very well shaped and handsome, but so small that its size did not exceed that of a finger of the hand. She was astonished at such a miraculous occurrence, and to insure her good fortune she closed the vessel again with great care. The noise was repeated that night, and on examining the vessel the following day she found that the child had attained the stature of a full-grown man. The joy of the