THE GREAT SPIRIT. Ixxix 



simply a malicious agent of disease, death, and mis- 

 chance. 



In no Indian language could the early missionaries 

 find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and 

 Oki meant anything endowed with supernatural powers, 

 from a snake-skin, or a greasy Indian conjurer, up to 

 Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to 

 use a circumlocution, — "The G-reat Chief of Men," or 

 " He who lives in the Sky." i Yet it should seem tliat 

 the idea of a supreme controlling spirit might naturally 

 arise from the peculiar character of Indian belief. The 

 idea that each race of animals has its archetype or 

 chief would easily suggest the existence of a supreme 

 cliief of the spirits or of the human race, — a conception 

 imperfectly shadowed forth in Manabozho. The Jesuit 

 missionaries seized this advantage. " If each sort of 

 animal has its king," they urged, " so, too, have men ; 

 and as man is above all the animals, so is the spirit 

 that rules over men the master of all the other spirits." 

 The Indian mind readily accepted the idea, and tribes 

 in no sense Christian quickly rose to the belief in 

 one controlling spirit. The Great Spirit became a dis- 

 tinct existence, a pervading power in the universe, and 

 a dispenser of justice. Many tribes now pray to him, 

 though still clinging obstinately to their ancient super- 

 stitions ; and with some, as the heathen portion of the 

 modern Iroquois, he is clothed with attributes of moral 

 good. 2 



1 See " Divers Seiitimens," appended to the Relation of 1635, § 27 ; and 

 also many other passages of early missionaries. 



2 In studying the writers of the last and of the present century, it is 

 to be remembered that their observations were made upon savages who 

 had been for generations in contact, immediate or otherwise, with the 

 doctrines of Christianity. Many observers have interpreted the religious 

 ideas of the Indians after preconceived ideas of their own ; and it may 



