ISRAELITE AND INDIAN. 59 



After careful examination, with the assistance of explorers and 

 linguists, I reassert my statement, published twelve years ago, that 

 no tribe or body of Indians, before missionary influence, enter- 

 tained any formulated or distinct belief in a single, overruling 

 " Great Spirit/' or any being corresponding to the later Israelite 

 or the Christian conception of God. All the statements of the 

 missionaries and early travelers to the opposite effect are errone- 

 ous. Even some of the earliest writers discovered this truth. 

 Lafiteau says that the names " Oki " and " Manito " were given to 

 various spirits and genii. Champlain said that Oki was a name 

 given to a man more valiant and skillful than common. Manito 

 signifies " something beyond comprehension." A snake was often 

 a manito, and seldom were snakes molested. "Hawaneu," re- 

 duced to correct vocables, only means loud-voiced i. e., thunder. 

 " Kitchi Manito " is not a proper name for one god, but an appella- 

 tion of an entire class of great spirits. So with the Dakota term 

 " Wakan," which means only the mysterious unknown. A watch 

 is a wakan. The Chahta word presented as " God " for two centu- 

 ries is now found to mean a " high hill." 



Some Indians, perhaps, had a vague idea of some good spirit or 

 being whom they did not worship and to whom they did not pray. 

 They prayed and sacrificed to the active daimons, concerning 

 whom they had many myths. In their various cosmologic myths 

 there was sometimes a vague and unformulated being who started 

 the machinery by which the myth proceeded; but when once 

 started no further attention was paid to such originator. Per- 

 haps some modern advanced thinkers have no clearer definition 

 of a great first cause. 



Praise has been lavished upon the Indians because they did 

 not take the name of God in vain. The true statement, however, 

 has a different significance. They did not, according to the best 

 linguistic scholars, have any word corresponding with the English 

 " God " either to use or misuse, and they deserve no more praise 

 for avoidance of profanity than for their total abstinence from 

 alcoholic drinks before such had been invented or imported. The 

 terms too liberally translated as " Master of Life " and " Maker of 

 Breath " were epithets merely. Perhaps there was an approach 

 to a title of veneration when the method of their clan system was 

 applied to supernatural persons, among whom there would natu- 

 rally be a chief or great father of the " beast gods," on the same 

 principle as there was a chieftaincy in tribes. 



The missionaries who have persistently found what did not 

 exist are not without excuse. Wholly independent of any design 

 to force welcome answers, an interviewer who asks a leading ques- 

 tion of an Indian can always obtain the answer which is supposed 

 to be desired. The sole safe mode of reaching the Indian's men- 



