lar expectations.

We are to seek the explanation of these wide-spread theories of the
soul's journey in the equally prevalent tenet that the sun is its
destination, and that that luminary has his abode beyond the ocean
stream, which in all primitive geographies rolls its waves around the
habitable land. This ocean stream is the water which all have to attempt
to pass, and woe to him whom the spirit of the waters, represented
either as the old woman, the dragon, or the dog of Hecate, seizes and
overcomes. In the lush fancy of the Orient, the spirit of the waters
becomes the spirit of evil, the ocean stream the abyss of hell, and
those who fail in the passage the damned, who are foredoomed to evil
deeds and endless torture.

No such ethical bearing as this was ever assigned the myth by the red
race before they were taught by Europeans. Father Brebeuf could only
find that the souls of suicides and those killed in war were supposed to
live apart from the others; "but as to the souls of scoundrels," he
adds, "so far from being shut out, they are the welcome guests, though
for that matter if it were not so, their paradise would be a total
desert, as Huron and scoundrel (_Huron et larron_) are one and the
same."[250-1] When the Minnetarees told Major Long and the Mannicicas of
the La Plata the Jesuits,[250-2] that the souls of the bad fell into the
waters and were swept away, these are, beyond doubt, attributable either
to a false interpretation, or to Christian instruction. No such
distinction is probable among savages. The Brazilian natives divided the
dead into classes, supposing that the drowned, those killed by violence,
and those yielding to disease, lived in separate regions; but no ethical
reason whatever seems to have been connected with this.[250-3] If the
conception of a place of moral retribution was known at all to the race,
it should be found easily recognizable in Mexico, Yucatan, or Peru. But
the so-called "hells" of their religions have no such significance, and
the spirits of evil, who were identified by early writers with Satan, no
more deserve the name than does the Greek Pluto.

Cupay or Supay, the Shadow, in Peru was supposed to rule the land of
shades in the centre of the earth. To him went all souls not destined to
be the companions of the Sun. This is all we know of his attributes; and
the assertion of Garcilasso de la Vega, that he was the analogue of the
Christian Devil, and that his name was neve