“There was a tremendous hurricane that carried away trees, mounds, houses, and the largest edifices, notwithstanding which many men and women escaped, principally in caves, and places where the great hurricane could not reach them.  A few days having passed, they set out to see what had become of the earth, when they found it all populated with monkeys.  All this time they were in darkness, without seeing the light of the sun, nor the moon, that the wind had brought them."[2]

In the Aztec creation-myths, according to the accounts furnished by Mendieta, and derived from Fray Andres de Olmos, one of the earliest of the Christian missionaries among the Mexicans, we have the following legend of the “Return of the Sun”: 

“Now, there had been no sun in existence for many years; so the gods being assembled in a place called Teotihuacan, six leagues from Mexico, and gathered at the time around a great fire, told their devotees that he of them who should first cast himself into that, fire should have the honor of being transformed into a sun.  So, one of them, called Nanahuatzin . . . flung himself into the fire.  Then the gods” (the chiefs?) “began to peer through the gloom in all directions for the expected light, and to make bets as to what part of heaven. he should

[1.  Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii, pp. 71-73.

2.  “North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 239.]

{p. 216}

first appear in.  Some said ‘Here,’ and some said ‘There’; but when the sun rose they were all proved wrong, for not one of them had fixed upon the east.”

In the long-continued darkness they had lost all knowledge of the cardinal points.  The ancient landmarks, too, were changed.

The “Popul Vuh,” the national book of the Quiches, tells us of four ages of the world.  The man of the first age was made of clay; he was “strengthless, inept, watery; he could not move his head, his face looked but one way; his sight was restricted, he could not look behind him,” that is, he had no knowledge of the past; “he had been endowed with language, but he had no intelligence, so he was consumed in the water."[1]

Then followed a higher race of men; they filled the world with their progeny; they had intelligence, but no moral sense”; “they forgot the Heart of Heaven.”  They were destroyed by fire and pitch from heaven, accompanied by tremendous earthquakes, from which only a few escaped.

Then followed a period when all was dark, save the white light “of the morning-star—­sole light as yet of the primeval world”—­probably a volcano.

“Once more are the gods in council, in the darkness, in the night of a desolated universe.”

Then the people prayed to God for light, evidently for the return of the sun: 

“’Hail!  O Creator they cried, ’O Former!  Thou that hearest and understandest us! abandon us not! forsake us not!  O God, thou that art in heaven and on earth; O Heart of Heaven I O Heart of Earth! give us descendants, and a posterity as long as the light endure.’” . . .