Among the Pueblos, this many-sided culture-hero is known as Montezuma,[186] and “is the centre of some of the most poetic myths found in ancient American mythology.” Many places in New Mexico claim to be his birthplace, and the variety of aspects under which Montezuma is presented is due to the fact that each tribe jealously guards its individual legends concerning his achievements. Emory wrote in 1847: The Pueblos speak of every event preceding the Spanish Conquest as of the days of Montezuma. Among the Pueblos, the Navajos, and the Apaches, the name of Montezuma is as familiar as is Washington to us. This is the more curious as none of these tribes are related in any way to the Aztec race by language.[187] An old tradition given as common to all Pueblo Indians is to the effect that they had no kinship with nomad tribes but were “a people seated on the soil,” and that they were “Children of Montezuma;[188] when he and his subjects were hard pressed by the Spaniards, they were summoned south to help in the succor of the City of Mexico, from whence none of them ever returned.” There is no foundation in fact for this legend, but a reasonable explanation for the picturesque tale is given by Bandelier, who says: “The Mexican Nahautl language has left positive traces, through the Indians from Central Mexico and the Spaniards themselves, who brought them to New Mexico as their servants.”[189] One is surprised and impressed by so often coming across analogies, in the tales of these so-called barbarians, with those which have all the charm and authority of classic antiquity. For example, there are everywhere among the Indians legends of a great flood and of mountains of refuge which correspond to Ararat, though the actual locality varies with the different tribes, just as is true of Si-pa-pu, their place of emergence from the underworld. This was in truth so continuously heard by the Spanish padres when first they came upon North American soil that they were wont to affirm the Indian religion to be a pervert from their own sacred theology. In some of the tribes we find the belief that when the waters covered the earth, all living things perished save Montezuma and his friend Coyote. They had built a boat and moored it high on the summit of Santa Rosa (their Ararat) in case of need. Montezuma in some of the tales thus became the founder of the Indian pueblos, of which Ácoma was the first and Pecos the second.