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.  This, sprinkled with blood, grew into a youth, the father of the present race.  The Quiche hero-gods, Hunaphu and Xblanque, died; their bodies were burnt, their bones ground to powder and thrown into the waters, whereupon they changed into handsome youths, with the same features as before. (Dorman, “Prim.  Superst.,” p. 193.)

Witches and warlocks, mermaids and mermen, are part of the mythology of the American tribes, as they were of the European races. (Ibid., p. 79.) The mermaid of the Ottawas was “woman to the waist and fair;” thence fish-like. (Ibid., p. 278.)

The snake-locks of Medusa are represented in the snake-locks of At-otarho, an ancient culture-hero of the Iroquois.

A belief in the incarnation of gods in men, and the physical translation of heroes to heaven, is part of the mythology of the Hindoos and the American races.  Hiawatha, we are told, rose to heaven in the presence of the multitude, and vanished from sight in the midst of sweet music.

The vocal statues and oracles of Egypt and Greece were duplicated in America.  In Peru, in the valley of Rimac, there was an idol which answered questions and became famous as an oracle. (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?”