For instance, I have quoted in this chapter the evidence of the Spanish chroniclers to the purity of the teaching attributed to Bochica.
The effect of such doctrines could not be lost on a people who looked upon him at once as an exemplar and a deity.

Nor was it.

The Spaniards have left strong testimony to the pacific and virtuous character of that nation, and its freedom from the vices so prevalent in lower races.[1] [Footnote 1: See especially the _Noticias sobre el Nuevo Reino de Granada_, in the _Colleccion de Documentos ineditos del Archivo de Indias_, vol.v, p.

529.] Now, as I dismiss from the domain of actual fact all these legendary instructors, the question remains, whence did these secluded tribes obtain the sentiments of justice and morality which they loved to attribute to their divine founders, and, in a measure, to practice themselves?
The question is pertinent, and with its answer I may fitly close this study in American native religions.
If the theory that I have advocated is correct, these myths had to do at first with merely natural occurrences, the advent and departure of the daylight, the winds, the storm and the rains.

The beneficent and injurious results of these phenomena were attributed to their personifications.
Especially was the dispersal of darkness by the light regarded as the transaction of all most favorable to man.