Some borrowing seems to have been done either by or from the Mayas; and the hero-myth of the Iroquois has so many of the lineaments of that of the Algonkins that it is difficult to believe that it was wholly independent of it.

But, on the whole, the identities often found in American myths are more justly attributable to a similarity of surroundings and impressions than to any other cause.
The diversity and intricacy of American mythology have been greatly fostered by the delight the more developed nations took in rhetorical figures, in metaphor and simile, and in expressions of amplification and hyperbole.

Those who imagine that there was a poverty of resources in these languages, or that their concrete form hemmed in the mind from the study of the abstract, speak without knowledge.

One has but to look at the inexhaustible synonymy of the Aztec, as it is set forth by Olmos or Sahagun, or at its power to render correctly the refinements of scholastic theology, to see how wide of the fact is any such opinion.

And what is true of the Aztec, is not less so of the Qquichua and other tongues.
I will give an example, where the English language itself falls short of the nicety of the Qquichua in handling a metaphysical tenet.