OUR INDIAN MYTHOLOGY. 529 



posed to have had its source in dreams, the impalpable nature of 

 whose visions suggested the pi-esence in the dreamer of a soul distinct 

 from the body. If the presence of a soul could explain dreams, it 

 could equally well be made to explain such things in himself as man 

 could not rationally comprehend. The idea of his own soul is fol- 

 lowed by the idea of a soul in every man. From this it is but a 

 short step to the idea of a soul or spirit in nature, to account for mys- 

 terious powers and properties. Thunder and lightning become the 

 work of a spirit ; fire, heat, and cold, the presence of others ; and so 

 on through all nature. Wherever there is something inexplainable, 

 there is a mysterious spirit. 



This is the earliest and simplest animism. Soon, however, unequal 

 forces of nature suggest unequal spirits behind and in them, and grad- 

 ually great and small spirits develop, some predominating others. 

 Throughout, all, whether equal, great, or small, are worshiped on ac- 

 count of their mysterious powers. Besides the spirits in living bodies 

 and in nature, are the souls released by death, but imagined still to 

 wander at times about the earth, and to have some influence on living 

 men, especially in controlling the fate of their bodily descendants. 

 From this conception arose ancestral worship, and the many ceremo- 

 nies at the grave intended to give peaceful rest beyond, that the de- 

 parted spirit might thus be kindly disposed toward his offspring. A 

 belief in a future life was necessary to a strong, active people having a 

 tenacious love of life. 



Little by little, as man becomes more self-appreciating, more confi- 

 dent in his superiority in the midst of surrounding nature, he gives to 

 each great and small spirit a personality more or less like his own. 

 Some of these will be merely exaggerated men, others a combination 

 of man and animal. But the result of the whole will be that out of 

 animism has grown polytheism, of which all know the congruous enor- 

 mities in European mythology. 



We have now gone as far as necessary in early Aryan religious 

 growth, for a comparison of Indian religion to be made with it. 



The Indian myths are a tangle of animism and polytheism, and 

 only when we approach them with the information gained from the 

 study of early Aryan religious worship do the hitherto senseless crudi- 

 ties open their hidden meanings. A few instances will show the ani- 

 mist or spiritual character. When the Algonquin Indian meets some- 

 thing he can not understand, there he fancies a manito present. This 

 word has the several meanings of spirit, soul, and the first. The mys- 

 terious steel of the white man is manito-biicabicik, i. e., spirit-stone. 

 The strange woven cloth is manito-wegin, spirit-skin. Among the 

 Chippewas manitoicis designates the magician. For this same idea of 

 magic, mystery, spirit, soul, the Dakota has the word wakan. Wa- 

 kan-tauJca is the Great Spirit ; icakan-hdi the lightning, literally the 

 thing of spirit origin, hdi meaning come. Thus every mystery is wa- 



VOL. XXIII. 34 



