Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/86

72 Heaven are on record, the following, and others to be cited presently. Even some Australians seem to think of going up to the clouds at death, to eat and drink, and hunt and fish as here. In North America, the Winnebagos placed their paradise in the sky, where souls travel along that 'Path of the Dead' which we call the Milky Way; and working out the ever-recurring solar idea, the modern Iroquois speak of the soul going upward and westward, till it comes out on the beauteous plains of heaven, with people and trees and things as on earth. In South America the Guarayos, representatives in some sort of the past condition of the Guarani race, worship Tamoi the Grandfather, the Ancient of Heaven; he was their first ancestor, who lived among them in old days and taught them to till the ground; then rising to heaven in the East he disappeared, having promised to be the helper of his people on earth, and to transport them, when they died, from the top of a sacred tree into another life, where they shall find their kindred and have hunting in plenty, and possess all that they possessed on earth; therefore it is that the Guarayos adorn their dead, and burn their weapons for them, and bury them with their faces to the East, whither they are to go. Among American peoples whose culture rose to a higher level than that of these savage tribes, we hear of the Peruvian Heaven, the glorious 'Upper World,' and of the temporary abode of Aztec warriors on heavenly wooded plains, where the sun shines when it is night on earth, wherefore it was a Mexican saying that the sun goes at evening to lighten the dead. What thoughts of heaven were in the minds of the old Aryan poets, this hymn from the Rig-Veda may show: —