THE AMERICAN FAMILY. 81 



destinies of men, while the latter is looked upon as the author of all their misfor- 

 tunes. Yet there is, for the most part, no regularity in the time or manner of 

 their worship, which appears to be the mere result of occasion or impulse. The 

 Indian hears God in the winds, and in the cataract, and acknowledges his presence 

 in all the phenomena of the elements ; yet these are always attributed to the same 

 spirit, and not, as with most barbarous people, to a multiplicity of spiritual agents. 

 Again, the Americans are little prone to idolatry; for it is rare to find any com- 

 munity among them paying homage to an image of their own making. So far as 

 inquiry has been extended to this subject, it appears that all the American nations 

 believe in the immortality of the soul, which is to enjoy in a future state the most 

 exciting temporal pleasures without fatigue or alloy : of these pastimes hunting 

 and fishing are the most esteemed, and hence the implements used in both are 

 buried with the dead. 



The Indians have an extraordinary veneration for their dead, which some- 

 times induces them, on removing from one section of the country to another, to 

 disinter the remains of their deceased relatives, and bear them to the new home 

 of the tribe. Hecke welder says, that when at Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, about 

 the middle of the last century, he saw a removing party of the Nanticokes pass 

 through that town, loaded with the bones of their dead friends, some of which 

 were in so recent a state as to taint the air as they passed.* 



The intellectual faculties of this great family appear to be of a decidedly 

 inferior cast when compared w^ith those of the Caucasian or Mongolian races. 

 They are not only averse to the restraints of education, but for the most part 

 incapable of a continued process of reasoning on abstract subjects. Their minds 

 seize with avidity on simple truths, while they at once reject whatever requires 

 investigation and analysis. Their proximity, for more than two centuries, to 

 European institutions, has made scarcely any appreciable change in their mode of 

 thinking or their manner of life ; and as to their own social condition, they are 

 probably in most respects what they were at the primitive epoch of their existence. 

 They have made few or no improvements in building their houses or their boats ; 

 their inventive and imitative faculties appear to be of a very humble grade, nor 

 have they the smallest predilection for the arts or sciences. The long annals of 

 missionary labor and private benefaction bestowed upon them, offer but very few 

 exceptions to the preceding statement, which, on the contrary, is sustained by the 

 combined testimony of almost all practical observers. Even in cases where they 



* Narr. p. 76. 

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