(Dorman, "Prim.
Superst.," p. 124.)
The Peruvians believed that men were sometimes metamorphosed into stones.
The Oneidas claimed descent from a stone, as the Greeks from the stones
of Deucalion. (Ibid., p. 132.)
Witchcraft is an article of faith among all the American races. Among
the Illinois Indians "they made small images to represent those whose
days they have a mind to shorten, and which they stab to the heart,"
whereupon the person represented is expected to die. (Charlevoix, vol.
ii., p. 166.) The witches of Europe made figures of wax of their
enemies, and gradually melted them at the fire, and as they diminished
the victim was supposed to sicken and die.
A writer in the Popular Science Monthly (April, 1881, p. 828) points out
the fact that there is an absolute identity between the folk-lore of the
negroes on the plantations of the South and the myths and stories of
certain tribes of Indians in South America, as revealed by Mr. Herbert
Smith's "Brazil, the Amazons, and the Coast." (New York: Scribner,
1879.) Mr. Harris, the author of a work on the folk-lore of the negroes,
asks this question, "When did the negro or the North American Indian
come in contact with the tribes of South America?"
Customs.
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