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correct and surprising, and even of the Fall of man, in language that 
struck me sometimes as running very parallel with the Scripture account. 
The story of the Fall was related to me something like this,—that there was a 
deputy from the Supreme Being came down to the earth and told the people 
what they should do and what they should not do, and if they went 
contrary to the Supreme Being they would be punished. The story ran 
that he came down by a rope, and that he forbade them to touch that rope, 
or something would happen. But a woman, whase curiosity was great, was 
anxious to try the rope. She did so, and the rope broke. She was hurt, 
and never recovered from that hurt. Here a woman is concerned, a hurt, 
and no full recovery. I could mention other things, but it is now too late, 
and if I did they could add nothing to this paper. I have in my own mind 
a full conviction that the Indians have traditions which correspond with Holy 
Writ; but there are things in their beliefs which I question whether they 
are derived from tradition at all—at least, in the same way. For instance, 
we read of Sun worship. Whether that was developed before the Flood is a 
question. If not, whence did they get it? It is not at all unlikely that, 
if persons drifted in very early times to the Continent of America, and settled 
here and there and became heads of tribes, others may have drifted over in 
subsequent ages, and thus a considerable amount of tradition has come to 
them gradually from persons arriving in small batches. In consequence of 
this there has arisen a mixture of ideas. I think this not unlikely, for we 
find among them things which could hardly have come from times so early 
as before the Flood. I am sorry to have said so much; but I will just add one 
thing—that the peculiarities in the traditions among the Indians, some 
believing in a deviland some not, some believing in afuture state and some 
not, are easily understood. If you take, say, a hundred people from this 
country, and let them drift to a land where there is no one living, and 
they become heads of tribes, then you can imagine that their descend- 
ants would have different ideas. Their ideas would, more or less, 
correspond with those of their patriarchs. So with the Indians; and this, 
I think, will account to a great extent for the great differences among 
them. (Cheers.) 
Rey. T. Dunn.—I should like to make a few remarks on one or two 
things brought forward in this paper. I have seen a great many of the 
North American Indians, both those in the northern part of the United 
States, and also the Indians who live along the coast of British Columbia, 
from Puget Sound to Alaska, I think one cannot but be struck with the 
resemblance of these Indians, in their features, to the Mongolians of 
Eastern Asia; and I cannot help thinking, and believing, that these Indians 
came, originally, across Behring’s Straits from Asia to America. My reason 
for thinking so is that a canoe voyage of that distance is not an unknown 
event, even in the memory of living men. I cannot call it a tradition, 
because living men remember their fathers telling about it—about a canoe 
being driven by the winds from Queen Charlotte’s Islands to the Sandwich 
Islands, that they lived there some years, built a kind of sloop, and came 
