As this did not happen, the priest gained a great
influence over them, and in the end they were persuaded to turn their
weapons against the Chimbica.
Clavigero has nothing to say concerning the origin of this Californian
superstition; but with some knowledge of the puma's character, it is not
difficult to imagine what it may have been. No doubt these savages had
been very well acquainted from ancient times with the animal's instinct
of friendliness toward man, and its extreme hatred of other carnivores,
which prey on the human species; and finding it ranged on their side, as
it were, in the hard struggle of life in the desert, they were induced
to spare it, and even to regard it as a friend; and such a feeling,
among primitive men, might in the course of time degenerate into such a
superstition as that of the Californians.
I shall, in conclusion, relate here the story of Maldonada, which is not
generally known, although familiar to Buenos Ayreans as the story of
Lady Godiva's ride through Coventry is to the people of that town. The
case of Maldonada is circumstantially narrated by Rui Diaz de Guzman, in
his history of the colonization of the Plata: he was a person high in
authority in the young colonies, and is regarded by students of South
American history as an accurate and sober-minded chronicler of the
events of his own times. He relates that in the year 1536 the settlers
at Buenos Ayres, having exhausted their provisions, and being compelled
by hostile Indians to keep within their pallisades, were reduced to the
verge of starvation.
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