Father Simon says _gagua_ is "el nombre del mismo sol," though ordinarily Sun is _Sua_.] Other names applied to this hero-god were Nemterequeteba, Bochica, and Zuhe, or Sua, the last mentioned being also the ordinary word for the Sun.
He was reported to have been of light complexion, and when the Spaniards first arrived they were supposed to be his envoys, and were called _sua_ or _gagua_, just as from the memory of a similar myth in Peru they were addressed as Viracochas.
In his form as Bochica, he is represented as the supreme male divinity, whose female associate is the Rainbow, Cuchaviva, goddess of rains and waters, of the fertility of the fields, of medicine, and of child-bearing in women, a relationship which I have already explained.[1] [Footnote 1: The principal authority for the mythology of the Mayscas, or Chibchas, is Padre Pedro Simon, _Noticias Historiales de las Conquistas de Tierra Firme en el Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, Pt.

iv, caps.

ii, iii, iv, printed in Kingsborough, _Mexican Antiquities_, vol.viii, and Piedrahita as above quoted.] Wherever the widespread Tupi-Guaranay race extended--from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and the boundless plains of the Pampas, north to the northernmost islands of the West Indian Archipelago--the early explorers found the natives piously attributing their knowledge of the arts of life to a venerable and benevolent old man whom they called "Our Ancestor," _Tamu_, or _Tume_, or _Zume_.
The early Jesuit missionaries to the Guaranis and affiliated tribes of Paraguay and southern Brazil, have much to say of this personage, and some of them were convinced that he could have been no other than the Apostle St.Thomas on his proselytizing journey around the world.
The legend was that Pay Zume, as he was called in Paraguay (_Pay_ = magician, diviner, priest), came from the East, from the Sun-rising, in years long gone by.

He instructed the people in the arts of hunting and agriculture, especially in the culture and preparation of the manioca plant, their chief source of vegetable food.

Near the city of Assumption is situated a lofty rock, around which, says the myth, he was accustomed to gather the people, while he stood above them on its summit, and delivered his instructions and his laws, just as did Quetzalcoatl from the top of the mountain Tzatzitepec, the Hill of Shouting.