90 SUMMER CEREMONIALS 
ject in relation to the desirability or rather the necessity 
of placing on record all the data which can he gathered in 
relation to the religious customs of our Indians. The 
wholesale destruction of aboriginal religions by the early 
settlers has very much limited the amount of knowledge 
which we have of the characteristics of Indian ceremonies. 
In the case of our Xew England aborigines we have very 
meagre data bearing on this point. While fragments of 
their nwthology can with great difficulty be gathered from 
the folk-tales of the survivors, and from the ex parte ixcconnts 
which have come down to us from the writings of the col- 
onists, who had no sympathy with "Devil worship," we 
have but little information of the nature and meaning of 
their religious ceremonials, or their forms of religious wor- 
ship. With the growth of an intelligent interest in the study 
in a comparative way of the evolution of religion, it be- 
comes desirable to have something more than can be gleaned 
from these sources. The best thing for us now to do is 
to endeavor to presers^e what is left before that too is 
swept away into oblivion. 
The inhabitants of a few of the pueblos of Xew ]\Iexico 
and Arizona still preserve in a comparatively pure condi- 
tion the religious observances and ceremonials of their an- 
cestors.^ The encroachments of the whites, and the inevit- 
able changes which follow in the customs of the Indians, 
render it imperative that as many observations of these as 
possible be collected at once. Changes in ceremonials in- 
evitably follow contact with the whites, so that it is highly 
probable that in no short time the religious observances 
at present practised will be modified or lost, and little 
>Tl)at the Zufiians were formerly muoh more numerous is indicated by several 
facts. Tlie large number ot ruins of great size claimed by this race as belonging 
to their ancestors points that way, and the many folk-tales of persons dwelling in 
pueblos now in ruins look the same way. 
