1T6 BULLETIN OF THE 



can race was by no means original, having been used by many 

 scientists (who never saw an Indian), in their classifications, some- 

 times under the less distinctive terra red; but the Indians are 

 neither red nor copper colored, having been first styled so from 

 the universal use, for personal adornment, by those their discov- 

 erers first met, of the ochre found in their soil, whereby the skin 

 remained stained long after the artificial hue had ceased to be 

 fresh, and, as the brighter imported pigment became accessible to 

 and greatly preferred by them, the hue of the ruddy metal for 

 their description might well be amended into that of vermilion. 

 It is true that, imitating the designation of their discoverers, the 

 eastern Indians have called themselves "red men," but bands 

 near the Rocky Mountains, who during the present century first 

 met explorers of European descent, spontaneously styled the 

 latter red, to mark the contrast of the sun -blistered faces of their 

 visitors with their own darker skin. Their real prevailing color 

 is brown, though with many various shades, some of which are not 

 distinguishable from those found in other parts of the world, espe- 

 cially Asia, and there is no more propriety in styling them red than 

 it would have been for Caesar to have called the ancient Britons 

 blue, when he noticed that they universally stained their bodies 

 with woad. Without entering upon a too vast field of discussion, 

 it may be indicated that the attempt to segregate our Indians 

 from the rest of the world, by a color classification, has been 

 even less successful in distinct results than that of craniologists. 



To deny that the Indians believed in and worshipped an over- 

 ruling power (which we have commonly called the Great Spirit 

 or Manito), seems to be an iconoclastic assault upon a favorite 

 field of religious illustration, perhaps tending to impair some, how- 

 ever superfluous, theological arguments. A better acquaintance, 

 however, with our continent's traditions, and particularly with 

 the etymology of its languages, shows that myths have been mis- 

 understood, and the epithets of divinity mistranslated, when they 

 have conveyed either the idea of monotheism, orof any personal 

 and definite God with the attributes given by us to that word or 

 the Latin Deus. The more learned missionaries are now not only 

 agreed that a general creator or upholder never existed in aborig- 

 inal cosmogony, but that the much simpler belief in a single 

 superhuman great chief or ruler is a modern graft. 



The Jesuits in their relations confess that no one immaterial 

 god was recognized by the Algonkins, the title Manito having 

 been introduced by themselves in a personal sense, and that of 

 the head Iroquois deity " Neo," or " Hawaneu," is asserted on lin- 

 guistic grounds to be a mere corruption of the French " Bieu" 

 and " Ze bon Dieu." One of the last claimants for a native god 

 of causation was a missionary to the Cherokees, who boasted 

 that he found the word of that language for " maker" used as a 

 divine title, but, on being cross-examined by Prof. J. W. Powell, 

 he was torced to admit that the word did not mean " maker " in 



