Other North American examples are the Kutchin, who have always
possessed the system of totems.[2]


[1] Kip's Jesuits in America i. 33.

[2] Dall's Alaska, pp. 196-198.


It is to be noticed, as a peculiarity of Red Indian totemism which
we have not observed (though it may exist) in Africa, that certain
stocks claim relations with the sun. Thus Pere Le Petit, writing
from New Orleans in 1730, mentions the Sun, or great chief of the
Natchez Indians.[1] The totem of the privileged class among the
Natchez was the sun, and in all myths the sun is regarded as a
living being, who can have children, who may be beaten, who bleeds
when cut, and is simply on the same footing as men and everything
else in the world. Precisely similar evidence comes from South
America. In this case our best authority is almost beyond
suspicion. He knew the native languages well, being himself a
half-caste. He was learned in the European learning of his time;
and as a son of the Incas, he had access to all surviving Peruvian
stores of knowledge, and could collect without difficulty the
testimonies of his countrymen. It will be seen[2] that Don
Garcilasso de la Vega could estimate evidence, and ridiculed the
rough methods and fallacious guesses of Spanish inquirers.
Garcilasso de la Vega was born about 1540, being the son of an Inca
princess and of a Spanish conqueror. His book, Commentarias
Reales,[3] was expressly intended to rectify the errors of such
Spanish writers as Acosta. In his account of Peruvian religion,