40 MYTHOLOGY OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
phenomena of nature are personified the personages are beasts, and all 
human institutions also were established by the ancient animal-gods. 
The ancient animals of any philosophy of this stage are found to con- 
stitute a clan or gens—a body of relatives, or consanguinei, with grand- 
fathers, fathers, sons, and brothers. In Ute theism, the ancient To.gé-dv, 
the first rattlesnake is the grandfather, and all the animal-gods are 
assigned to their relationships. Grandfather To-gé-dv, the wise, was the 
chief of the council, but Cin-ad-dv, the ancient wolf, was the chief of the 
clan. 
There were many other clans and tribes of ancient gods with whom 
these supreme gods had dealings, of which hereafter; and, finally, each 
of these ancient gods became the progenitor of a new tribe, so that we 
have a tribe of bears, a tribe of eagles, a tribe of rattlesnakes, a tribe of 
spiders, and many other tribes, as we have tribes of Utes, tribes of Sioux, 
tribes of Navajos; and in that philosophy tribes of animals are consid- 
ered to be coérdinate with tribes of men. All of these gods have invisi- 
ble duplicates—spirits—and they have often visited the earth. All of 
the wonderful things seen in nature are done by the animal-gods. That 
elder life was a magic life; but the descendants of the gods are degen- 
erate. Now and then as a medicine-man by practicing sorcery can per- 
form great feats, so now and then there is a medicine-bear, a medicine- 
wolf, or a medicine-snake that can work magic. 
On winter nights the Indians gather about the camp-fire, and then the 
doings of the gods are recounted inmany a mythic tale. I have heard 
the venerable and impassioned orator on the camp-meeting stand re- 
hearse the story of the crucifixion, and have seen the thousands gath- 
ered there weep in contemplation of the story of divine suffering, and 
heard their shouts roll down the forest aisles as they gave vent to their 
joy at the contemplation of redemption. But the scene was not a whit 
more dramatic than another I have witnessed in an evergreen forest of 
the Rocky Mountain region, where a tribe was gathered under the great 
pines, and the temple of light from the blazing fire was walled by the 
darkness of midnight, and in the midst of the temple stood the wise 
old man, telling, in simple savage language, the story of Ta-wdts, when 
he conquered the sun and established the seasons and the days. In that 
pre-Columbian time, before the advent of white men, all the Indian 
tribes of North America gathered on winter nights by the shores of the 
seas where the tides beatin solemn rhythm, by the shores of the great 
lakes where the waves dashed against frozen beaches, and by the banks 
of the rivers flowing ever in solemn mystery—each in its own temple of 
illumined space—and listened to the story of its ownsupreme gods, the 
ancients of time. 
Religion, in this stage of theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing, 
fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has its 
potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced, and 
their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No en- 
