[Footnote 1:  Fray Hieronimo Roman, De la Republica de las Indias Occidentales, Lib. ii, cap. xv; Diego de Landa, Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, p. 288.  Cogolludo also mentions Ix chel, Historia de Yucatan, Lib. iv, cap. vi.  The word in Maya for rainbow is chel or cheel; ix is the feminine prefix, which also changes the noun from the inanimate to the animate sense.]

That the Rainbow should be personified as wife of the Light-God and mother of the rain-gods, is an idea strictly in accordance with the course of mythological thought in the red race, and is founded on natural relations too evident to be misconstrued.  The rainbow is never seen but during a shower, and while the sun is shining; hence it is always associated with these two meteorological phenomena.

I may quote in comparison the rainbow myth of the Moxos of South America.  They held it to be the wife of Arama, their god of light, and her duty was to pour the refreshing rains on the soil parched by the glaring eye of her mighty spouse.  Hence they looked upon her as goddess of waters, of trees and plants, and of fertility in general.[1]

[Footnote 1:  “Fabula, ridicula adspersam superstitione, habebant de iride.  Ajebant illam esse Aramam feminam, solis conjugem, cujus officium sit terras a viro exustas imbrium beneficio recreare.  Cum enim viderent arcum illum non nisi pluvio tempore in conspectu venire, et tunc arborum cacuminibus velut insidere, persuadebant sibi aquarum illum esse Praesidem, arboresque proceras omnes sua in tutela habere.”  Franc.  Xav., Eder, Descriptio Provinciae Moxitarum in Regno Peruano p. 249 (Budae, 1791).]

Or we may take the Muyscas, a cultivated and interesting nation who dwelt on the lofty plateau where Bogota is situated.  They worshiped the Rainbow under the name Cuchaviva and personified it as a goddess, who took particular care of those sick with fevers and of women in childbirth.  She was also closely associated in their myth with their culture-hero Bochica, the story being that on one occasion, when an ill-natured divinity had inundated the plain of Bogota, Bochica appeared to the distressed inhabitants in company with Cuchaviva, and cleaving the mountains with a blow of his golden sceptre, opened a passage for the waters into the valley below.[1]

[Footnote 1:  E. Uricoechea, Gramatica de la Lengua Chibcha, Introd., p. xx.  The similarity of these to the Biblical account is not to be attributed to borrowing from the latter, but simply that it, as they, are both the mythological expressions of the same natural phenomenon.  In Norse mythology, Freya is the rainbow goddess.  She wears the bow as a necklace or girdle.  It was hammered out for her by four dwarfs, the four winds from the cardinal points, and Odin seeks to get it from her.  Schwartz, Ursprung der Mythologie, S. 117.]

As goddess of the fertilizing showers, of growth and life, it is easily seen how Ixchel came to be the deity both of women in childbirth and of the medical art, a Juno Sospita as well as a Juno Lucina.