They believed
that though they sacrificed the bird annually, she came to life
again and returned to her home in the mountains. Moreover, they
thought that "as often as the bird was killed, it became multiplied;
because every year all the different Capitanes celebrated the same
feast of _Panes,_ and were firm in the opinion that the birds
sacrificed were but one and the same female."
The unity in multiplicity thus postulated by the Californians is
very noticeable and helps to explain their motive for killing the
divine bird. The notion of the life of a species as distinct from
that of an individual, easy and obvious as it seems to us, appears
to be one which the Californian savage cannot grasp. He is unable to
conceive the life of the species otherwise than as an individual
life, and therefore as exposed to the same dangers and calamities
which menace and finally destroy the life of the individual.
Apparently he imagines that a species left to itself will grow old
and die like an individual, and that therefore some step must be
taken to save from extinction the particular species which he
regards as divine.
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