376 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



vast subject, and can here be merely touched upon, especially 

 with a view to the removal of some current misconceptions and 

 exaggerations, and thus reduce the question to its due pro- 

 portions. 



We are assured by the editor of Rufinesque's Walam Olum 

 that " the notion of a bad spirit, a ' Devil,' was wholly unknown 

 to the aborigines, and entirely borrowed from the whites 1 ,'' and 

 authorities are quoted. Nevertheless the evidence of a general 

 belief in evil spirits is overwhelming 2 , and even in this book itself 

 reference is made to the "Evil Manito 3 ," who "made evil beings 

 only 4 ,'' and again to "an evil being, a mighty magician," who 

 "came on earth, and with him brought badness... sickness... 

 death 5 ." Here is the Evil One playing an important part in the 

 legend itself, the text of which the editor thinks " is a genuine 

 native production 6 ." 



So far then the American and Siberian beliefs are in accord. 



But such notions are well-nigh universal, and would therefore 



supply no argument for common origin or contact, but for the 



shamanistic element more or less common to both. The term 



" shaman," which of course nowhere occurs in 



Shamanism. ......... 



America, is so freely used by writers on the native 

 religions, that the identity of these and the Asiatic primitive 

 systems is tacitly assumed, with all the above indicated corollaries. 

 But the American tungaks, as the Alaskan Eskimos call them 7 , 

 stand for the most part at a much lower level than the true 

 Siberian shamans. They are little more than conjurers, or medi- 

 cine-men, like those who in Africa " smell out " the witches and 

 other evil-doers. Although sometimes looked upon as mediators 



1 The Lenape and their Legends, etc., Philadelphia, 1885, p. 68. 



2 Thus the Eskimo say there is a good spirit who taught them to use 

 kayaks, and a bad spirit how to spoil and destroy them (Shelikhof, quoted by 

 Petroff, p. 137). Cf. also Niblack's statement that amongst the North-west 

 Coast Indians the sway of the shamans "depends largely upon the fear and 

 respect excited by belief in their influence and power ov&c good and evil spirits" 

 (The Coast Indians, p. 348). 



J p. 166. 4 p. r73- 5 pp. 175-7. 6 P- 158- 



7 To the western tnngak corresponds the Greenland angakok, who is now 



little heard of, but figures largely in the records of the early missionaries, Hans 



Egede and others. 



