Water the oldest element.--Its use in purification.--Holy water.--The Rite of Baptism.--The Water of Life.--Its symbols.--The Vase.--The Moon.--The latter the goddess of love and agriculture, but also of sickness, night, and pain.--Often represented by a dog.--Fire worship under the form of Sun worship.--The perpetual fire.--The new fire.--Burning the dead.--A worship of the passions, but no sexual dualism in myths, nor any phallic worship in America.--Synthesis of the worship of Fire, Water, and the Winds in the THUNDER-STORM, personified as Haokah, Tupa, Catequil, Contici, Heno, Tlaloc, Mixcoatl, and other deities, many of them triune 122 CHAPTER VI. THE SUPREME GODS OF THE RED RACE. Analysis of American culture myths.--The Manibozho or Michabo of the Algonkins shown to be an impersonation of LIGHT, a hero of the Dawn, and their highest deity.--The myths of Ioskeha of the Iroquois, Viracocha of the Peruvians, and Quetzalcoatl of the Toltecs essentially the same as that of Michabo.--Other examples.--Ante-Columbian prophecies of the advent of a white race from the east as conquerors.--Rise of later culture myths under similar forms 159 CHAPTER VII. THE MYTHS OF THE CREATION, THE DELUGE, THE EPOCHS OF NATURE, AND THE LAST DAY. Cosmogonies usually portray the action of the SPIRIT on the WATERS.--Those of the Muscogees, Athapascas, Quichés, Mixtecs, Iroquois, Algonkins, and others.--The Flood-Myth an unconscious attempt to reconcile a creation in time with the eternity of matter.--Proof of this from American mythology.--Characteristics of American Flood-Myths.--The person saved usually the first man.--The number seven.--Their Ararats.--The rôle of birds.--The confusion of tongues.--The Aztec, Quiché, Algonkin, Tupi, and earliest Sanscrit flood-myths.--The belief in Epochs of Nature a further result of this attempt at reconciliation.--Its forms among Peruvians, Mayas, and Aztecs.--The expectation of the End of the World a corollary of this belief.--Views of various nations 193 CHAPTER VIII. THE ORIGIN OF MAN. Usually man is the EARTH-BORN, both in language and myths.--Illustrations from the legends of the Caribs, Apalachians, Iroquois, Quichuas, Aztecs, and others.--The under-world.--Man the product of one of the primal creative powers, the Spirit, or the Water, in the myths of the Athapascas, Eskimos, Moxos, and others--Never literally derived from an inferior species 222 CHAPTER IX. THE SOUL AND ITS DESTINY.