" In all early age the people
were happy and peaceful; they became wicked; "snake worship" was
introduced, and was associated, as in Genesis, with the "fall of man;"
Nana-Bush became the ancestor of the new race; his name reminds us of
the Toltec Nata and the Hebrew Noah. After the flood came a dispersing
of the people, and a separation into hunters and tillers of the soil.
Among the Mandan Indians we not only find flood legends, but, more
remarkable still, we find an image of the ark preserved from generation
to generation, and a religious ceremony performed which refers plainly
to the destruction of Atlantis, and to the arrival of one of those who
escaped from the Flood, bringing the dreadful tidings of the disaster.
It must be remembered, as we will show hereafter, that many of these
Mandan Indians were white men, with hazel, gray, and blue eyes, and all
shades of color of the hair from black to pure white; that they dwelt in
houses in fortified towns, and manufactured earthen-ware pots in which
they could boil water--an art unknown to the ordinary Indians, who
boiled water by putting heated stones into it.
I quote the very interesting account of George Catlin, who visited the
Mandans nearly fifty years ago, lately republished in London in the
"North American Indians," a very curious and valuable work.
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