RESl'LTS. Ixxxix 



they had taken offence at seeing the bones of one of their 

 race thrown to a dog. Well, and even highly developed, 

 in a few instances, — I allude especially to the Iroquois, 

 — with respect to certain points of material concernment, 

 the mind of the Indian in other respects was and is 

 almost hopelessly stagnant. The very traits that raise 

 him above the servile races are hostile to the kind and 

 degree of civilization which those races so easily attain. 

 His intractable spirit of independence, and the pride 

 which forbids him to be an imitator, reinforce but too 

 strongly that savage lethargy of mind from which it is so 

 hard to rouse him. No race, perhaps, ever offered greater 

 difficulties to those laboring for its improvement. 



To sum up the results of this examination, the primi- 

 tive Indian was as savage in his religion as in his life. 

 He was divided between fetich-worship and that next 

 degree of religious development which consists in the 

 worship of deities embodied in the human form. His 

 conception of their attributes was such as might have 

 been expected. His gods were no whit better than him- 

 self. Even when he borrows from Christianity the idea 

 of a Supreme and Universal Spirit, his tendency is to 

 reduce Him to a local habitation and a bodily shape ; and 

 this tendency disappears only in tribes that have been 

 long in contact with civilized white men. CThe primitive 

 Indian, yielding his untutored homage to One All-per- 

 vading and Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhet- 

 oricians, and sentimentalists^ 



