A man and woman
escaped in a canoe, and arrived on the main-land; and from these the
Okanagaus are descended." (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 149.)
Here we have the Flood legend clearly connected with a lost island.
The Nicaraguans believed "that ages ago the world was destroyed by a
flood, in which the most part of mankind perished. Afterward the teotes,
or gods, restored the earth as at the beginning." (Ibid., p. 75.) The
wild Apaches, "wild from their natal hour," have a legend that "the
first days of the world were happy and peaceful days;" then came a great
flood, from which Montezuma and the coyote alone escaped. Montezuma
became then very wicked, and attempted to build a house that would reach
to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts.
(Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 76.)
The Pimas, an Indian tribe allied to the Papagos, have a peculiar flood
legend. The son of the Creator was called Szeu-kha (Ze-us?). An eagle
prophesied the deluge to the prophet of the people three times in
succession, but his warning was despised; "then in the twinkling of an
eye there came a peal of thunder and an awful crash, and a green mound
of water reared itself over the plain.
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