278 FOSSIL MEN. 



If these general statements be conceded and I 

 think a vast mass of fact lying beyond the range of 

 our present inquiry might be adduced to prove them, 

 then the following general truths may be accepted 

 as to the primitive religious connections of the New 

 World and the Old. (1) All the religions of America, 

 and all the primitive faiths of the Old World, alike 

 embrace the elements of a Supreme Creator, subor- 

 dinate spirits of good and evil, a fallen human race, a 

 first mother, who is the mother of a Saviour, and a 

 division of human history into two periods by a dilu- 

 vial catastrophe. (2) There is no trace of the origin of 

 these ideas in any other source than historical fact and 

 primitive monotheism. It is impossible to trace them 

 back to mere worship of the elements and to fetich- 

 ism. They are remnants of a higher and purer faith. 

 (3) The American races must have diverged from the 

 general mass of humanity at a period so early that the 

 peculiar features of the Hebrew and Aryan religions 

 had not yet developed themselves out of the primitive 

 patriarchal faith, so that the origin of the American 

 religions lies in the antediluvian and early post-diluvian 

 time. (4) This accounts for the fact that some have 

 seen in these American religions Egyptian, Indian, 

 Hebrew, or Aryan influences, because the primitive 

 ideas of all these exist in America, though undevel- 

 oped, or developed after a peculiar manner. (5) Both 

 in language and religion such special affinities as exist 

 connect the Algonquin tribes with the Aryan races, 

 or rather, with the so-called Pelasgic elements which 



