The belief in satyrs, and other creatures half man and half animal,
survived in America. The Kickapoos are Darwinians. "They think their
ancestors had tails, and when they lost them the impudent fox sent every
morning to ask how their tails were, and the bear shook his fat sides at
the joke." (Ibid., p. 232.) Among the natives of Brazil the father cut a
stick at the wedding of his daughter; "this was done to cut off the
tails of any future grandchildren." (Tylor, vol. i., p. 384.)
Jove, with the thunder-bolts in his hand, is duplicated in the Mexican
god of thunder, Mixcoatl, who is represented holding a bundle of arrows.
"He rode upon a tornado, and scattered the lightnings." (Dorman, "Prim.
Superst.," p. 98.)
Dionysus, or Bacchus, is represented by the Mexican god Texcatzoncatl,
the god of wine. (Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 418.)
Atlas reappears in Chibchacum, the deity of the Chibchas; he bears the
world on his shoulders, and when be shifts the burden from one shoulder
to another severe earthquakes are produced. (Bollaert, pp. 12, 13.)
Deucalion repeopling the world is repeated in Xololt, who, after the
destruction of the world, descended to Mictlan, the realm of the dead,
and brought thence a bone of the perished race.
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