OCR Text |
Show INDIANS AND THUNDER. At most all the tribes in the United States believed the thunder to be produced by the wings of a great bird, and that the lightning was the serpents that were in variably connected with the thunder bird. Among the ancient tribes of the Mississippi Valley, the thunder, therefore, soon became a thunder god who could be propitiated with sacrifices. The Illinois Indians offered up a small dog when a child happened to be sick upon a day when there was much thunder, supposing the latter to be a cause of the malady. Many accidents like conflagrations, were attributed to this angry god, and some tribes did bloody penances of propitiation, often burning to death their own children. Statements that the Indians adored the thunder however seem to be erroneous. It was the cause of the thunder that they worshipped, and before which they burned tobacco and buffalo meat, or cut off the joints of their fingers, or threw their children into the fire when they were overcome with fear. The Peruvians had as an ideal a stone that had been split by the lightning. They offered it gold and silver. The natives of Honduras burned cotton seed when it thundered. Other Southern tribes made no sacrifices on the approach of a storm, but abased themselves in the most abject fear. The wild rice being aquatic and looking like an arrow or spear, it is also attributed to the thunder spirit as to its origin. In Mexico great temples were built upon the sacred spots where lightning had struck. A curious notion among Peruvians was that the preserved bodies of twin children who died in infancy should be worshipped supposing that one of them was the ?? of the thunder, the origin of the idea being the feet that the thunder god of that people was one of the celestial twins of ?? and Piquerod. This tradition was utilized by Pizarro's missionaries to teach the Indians the doctrine of the Trinity. |