264 FOSSIL MEN. 



on quipus or wampum-belts, they become still more 

 unchangeable. But even an oral tradition among 

 such people as the Americans is more enduring than 

 a temple or a pyramid. 



The American in still another point conformed to 

 the most primitive and also most modern religious 

 tendencies of his eastern brethren. He believed in 

 an infinity of inferior spirits, good and evil, haunting 

 particular places, attached as guardian angels or genii 

 4 to certain persons, families, and tribes, of various 

 powers and properties, and of which any object, ani- 

 mate or inanimate, might be the emblem or material 

 representative. Throughout the whole of the vast 

 Algonquin family, these spirits were designated by 

 the word " Manitou," which reminds us of the ancient 

 Pelasgic or Etruscan " Manes " of the Eomans, and 

 the " Menim," fates or destinies, of the Chaldaeans and 

 primitive Arabians. Under other names they were 

 worshipped by the western and northern tribes, and the 

 belief in them seems to have been universal through- 

 out America. Evil manitous were to be deprecated 

 by offerings, and good manitous were special tutelary 

 spirits to whom was committed the care of human 

 interests. Every man or woman might possess such 

 a spirit guardian, who was revealed in the course of a 

 protracted fast, undertaken for the purpose at the time 

 of entering into manhood or womanhood. The guard- 

 ian genius usually revealed himself in the guise of 

 some material object, and this became at once the 

 emblem of the manitou, and the totem or armorial 



