498 TRIBES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI [eth. ANN. 40 



poral, not spiritual welfare, it is not their fault. Why should they 

 desire what they do not want ? If no moral sense of right and wrong 

 is found among them, no sins acknowledged, nor future punishments 

 feared, it must follow that temporal welfare and personal advantage 

 are all that remains worth praying or fasting for. If they pray 

 and sacrifice to the sun and thunder it is nothing more than acknowl- 

 edging the existence and power of God in these, His works. 



If they depend on fetishes and amulets to aid them in ordinary 

 life it is what many Christians do in a different way, yet these are 

 not accused of idolatry, If the right ideas were instilled into the 

 mind of the Indian he would be no more the savage, but the Chris- 

 tian, and would worship the same being in a different sense and 

 form than he now does in any way his distorted imagination thinks 

 may prove effective. Great evil or great good is evaded or invoked 

 from the Great Spirit through great apparent mediums, as the Sun 

 and Thunder. 



Smaller evils and smaller benefits are averted or sought through 

 the medium of charms which though not intrinsically of any virtue, 

 yet benefits are the consequences attending on their prayers through 

 them, their character being rendered sacred by constant care, and 

 the importance of their position as mediums of worship. The 

 identity of the Great Spirit as a being appears to be lost in their 

 worship of the portions of creation capable of inspiring them with 

 fear. His existence as a cause is admitted, but we do not observe 

 He is often addressed except through some visible medium, which is 

 as it were a separation of his power among these objects or animals. 



The medicine sack contains the fetish or charm referred to, which 

 with a lock of some dead relative's hair and a small piece of tobacco 

 is inclosed in several envelopes of skins of different kinds, on which 

 pictures of imaginary or real animals are rudely drawn. 



This sack is made of raw buffalo hide (dried), the hair scraped 

 off and painted and fringed in various ways. It is well 

 tied up, not pried into by anyone, and mostly suspended to a pole 

 outside the lodge in camp or carried on the back of some woman 

 when traveling. When the owner dies it is buried with him. This 

 is the arcanum of the medicine sack, and it possesses none of the 

 features of an ark, either inside or out. 



Immortality 



That the soul lives after death is the general assent, and that this 

 is a final state, but by pursuing the inquiry we do not arrive at any 

 certain idea of their occupation there, as they will always say they 

 do not know. This much, however, some acknowledged, that when 

 they die their soul is taken to the south to a warm country, though 



