64 REVIEWS THE GREAT DESERTS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



thousand miles westward, — where the enterprise of the Recollet and 

 Jesuit missionaries preceded the earhest traders in the exploration of 

 the great Lakes, — we have watched a band of Chippewa squaws 

 decorating with flowers and birch-bark beadwork, the altar of the 

 little Indian Chapel at La Point, on Lake Superior ; ever and anon 

 kneeling reverently before the homely looking stucco figures of the 

 Virgin and Child, as they there made ready for the celebration of one 

 of the Church's high festivals. "We have heard the psalm tune raised 

 by an old Mohawk chief, in the Episcopalian chapel of Tuscarora, on 

 the Grand River ; seen the Missassaguas gathering for the service of 

 their Baptist Missionary at Rice Lake ; and followed the Saulteaux 

 canoes as they dispersed from a Methodist Indian Camp Meetings 

 among the Islands of St. Marie's River. Christianity in some sort 

 has been brought to bear on the Red Indian of these northern regions 

 of the new world for some two-and-a-half centuries. In this work the 

 French missionaries took the lead ; and without forgetting the memo- 

 rable achievements of John Elliot and the devoted labours of David 

 Brainard, we are bound to express our conviction that the Roman 

 Catholic missionary has been greatly more successful in making 

 converts after his fashion, than the protestant teacher. In part, at 

 least this is accounted for by the adaptability of the showy externals 

 of his worship to the Indian mind. It is a species of object-teaching 

 which appeals to the acutest senses of the Indian, instead of making 

 demands on his inert reasoning powers. In part also it may be 

 ascribed, without prejudice, to the less exacting requirements of the 

 proselytising teacher. A compliance with periodical forms and cere- 

 monies, and the rendering devout homage to visible objects of 

 mysterious sanctity, is in full accordance with all the rude conceptions 

 of religion in the savage mind. But certainly a " robust faith," such 

 as the Abbe Domenech assigns to Indian Catholicism is about the last 

 definition we should apply to the religion of the native convert. " It 

 is true we l:ave three very good Spanish Gods," was, as the Mexican 

 traveller, Bullock, tells us, the remark of a native Mexican, on 

 seeing some of the idols of his ancestors dug up on the site of 

 the Teocalli overthrown by Cortes more than two centuries before j. 

 " but," he added, " they might still have allowed us to keep a few of 

 those of our fathers ;" and it is an undoubted fact that among many 

 nominal converts both of Catholic and Protestant teaching, the gods 

 of their ancestors are still the objects of their most genuine worship.. 



