Page:Myths of Mexico and Peru.djvu/418

 the huaca of the district by dreadful tempests, hurling rain and hail at him for three days and nights in such quantities as to form the great lake of Pariacaca. Burnt llamas were offered to him. But the Incas, discontented with this local worship, which by no means suited their system of central government, determined to create one thunder-deity to whom all the tribes in the empire must bow as the only god of his class. We are not aware what his name was, but we know from mythological evidence that he was a mixture of all the other gods of thunder in the Peruvian Empire, first because he invariably occupied the third place in the triad of greater deities, the creator, sun, and thunder, all of whom were more or less amalgamations of provincial and metropolitan gods, and secondly because a great image of him was erected in the Coricancha at Cuzco, in which he was represented in human form, wearing a headdress which concealed his face, symbolic of the clouds, which ever veil the thunder-god's head. He had a special temple of his own, moreover, and was assigned a share in the sacred lands by the Inca Pachacutic. He was accompanied by a figure of his sister, who carried jars of water. An unknown Quichuan poet composed on the myth the following graceful little poem, which was translated by the late Daniel Garrison Brinton, an enthusiastic Americanist and professor of American archæology in the University of Pennsylvania: 300