INDIAN PANTHEISM. Ixvii 



It remains to speak of the religious and superstitious 

 ideas which so deeply influenced Indian life. 



RELIGION AND SUPERSTITIONS. 



The religious belief of the North-American Indians 

 seems, on a first view, anomalous and contradictory. 

 It certainly is so, if we adopt the popular impression. 

 Romance, Poetry, and Rhetoric point, on the one hand, 

 to the august conception of a one all-ruling Deity, a 

 Great Spirit, omniscient and omnipresent ; and we are 

 called to admire the untutored intellect which could 

 conceive a thought too vast for Socrates and Plato. On 

 the other hand, we find a chaos of degrading, ridicu- 

 lous, and incoherent superstitions. A closer examination 

 will show that the contradiction is more apparent than 

 real. We will begin with the lowest forms of Indian 

 belief, and thence trace it upward to the highest con- 

 ceptions to which the unassisted mind of the savage 

 attained. 



To the Indian, the material world is sentient and intel- 

 ligent. Birds, beasts, and reptiles have ears for human 

 prayers, and are endowed with an influence on human 

 destiny. A mysterious and inexplicable power resides in 

 inanimate things. They, too, can listen to the voice of 

 man, and influence his life for evil or for good. Lakes, 

 rivers, and waterfalls are sometimes the dwelling-place of 

 spirits; but more frequently they are themselves living 

 beings, to be propitiated by prayers and offerings. The 

 lake has a soul ; and so has the river, and the cata- 

 ract. Each can hear the words of men, and each can 

 be pleased or ofiended. In the silence of a forest, the 

 gloom of a deep ravine, resides a living mystery, in- 

 definite, but redoubtable. Through all the works of 



