THE PEIMITIVE IDEA OF GOD. 271 



worn and eroded outcrop of certain sandstones of 

 the Lignite Tertiary series, rising alone in the midst 

 of a boundless prairie country, and striking the ima- 

 gination of the traveller by a resemblance to ruined 

 buildings. One of them forms a natural archway, 

 resembling a fragment of an Egyptian temple, and is 

 a veritable cathedral to all the wandering tribes of the 

 West. Standing awe-stricken before this strange piece 

 of nature's architecture, the Indian makes some simple 

 offering, invokes the guardian spirit of the shrine, and 

 perhaps engraves on the sandstone the mark of his 

 own totem. The figures below (Fig. 41) show some 

 of the marks thus made; and their resemblance in 

 style to those on pre-historic implements of Europe 

 must strike every one. Some of them are of course 

 quite modern, but no one knows how far back in past 

 ages these rocks have been venerated by the red man, 

 who places on them his totem, or that of his tribe, 

 with the same feeling with which an Englishman 

 regards a monument in Westminster Abbey. The 

 Indian, however, with an older and truer faith than 

 that of many who despise or malign his simple wor- 

 ship, knows that the Most High " dwelleth not in 

 temples made with hands/' nor even in shrines of 

 nature's workmanship, and regards these as merely 

 the dwellings of the subordinate agents, who must 

 obey the commands of the Great Spirit. 



We can see in such a natural temple as the Roches 

 Percees the original of the megalithic monuments which 

 strike the imagination of the European antiquary, 



