Note 78.1 — Chapter XVIII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.
Reading edition
On the western continent there lingers among the Zuñi, one of the four stocks of Pueblo Indians in Arizona and New Mexico, a tradition pointing to the prevalence at one time of human sacrifices to water. Zuñi is built upon a knoll in a broad valley walled by picturesque mesas or tablelands, of red and white sandstone. The waters of the valley once rose in a flood and compelled the inhabitants to flee to a mesa several hundred feet high for safety. And still the waters rose, threatening to submerge the mesa itself, until the priests determined to sacrifice a youth and a maiden to propitiate them. The two were dressed in their most beautiful clothes, adorned with many necklaces of turquoise and other precious beads, and cast into the flood. The offering stayed the calamity; and the victims, turned to stone, are yet to be seen in a columnar rock broken near the top into two parts, which are capped with head-like forms and called by the people the father and mother rocks.78.1