THE RATTLESNAKE IN SAVAGE METEMPSYCHOSIS. 109 



the transmigration of souls— a belief almost universal among our native 

 Americans. Good Indians go at once to happiness, but the souls of bad 

 Indians take up their abode in various animals of evil repute. In this 

 baleful list snakes take a prominent place, and become "an object of 

 superstitious belief and unfeigned terror, inasmuch as they consider them 

 to be vivified by the souls of the impious dead, despatched as special 

 emissaries of the devil to work them evil." With the Apaches, for ex- 

 ample, this is a very distinct doctrine. To the Pomo squaw, therefore, 

 the rattlesnake brandished before her eyes, under the hot denunciations 

 of the orator, was not simply a suggestion of eternal punishment, like the 

 smell of brimstone to a Puritan, but a visible incarnation of one of the 

 foremost of those malevolent forces which the Indian supposed filled the 

 world, existing only for his annoyance, and turning his religion into 

 demon ology. 



This doctrine of " animism," as it has been called, existed to a greater 

 or less degree among all the aborigines, conferring upon every object in 

 nature, and especially upon animals, spiritual qualities, or a shade, through 

 which it was able to exert an influence upon humanity. The more pow- 

 erful to inflict harm anything showed itself to be, the more awe and devo- 

 tion it required. Thus the dangerous currents of falls and whirlpools are 

 supplicated and offered sacrifices, to propitiate the resident spirit animat- 

 ing the disturbed waters and contending with the canoe. 



When an Ojibway warrior prepared for battle, the rattlesnake was a 

 part of his accoutrements. " It is always observable," says Peter Jones, 

 " that the Indians take out the bag which contains the poison of this 

 venomous reptile, and carry it alive in their medicine-box when they go 

 to war."- Another custom was to wrap about their waists a black water- 

 snake — alive at first, but retained after its slow death until the end of the 

 foray. 



Thus among animals the whole class of serpents came to take high 

 rank in the long catalogue of spirits, and the rattlesnake, with his satanic 

 face and terrible fangs, rose above all into a superior and distinct deity, 

 which was held by some groups of Indian tribes in the greatest fear and 

 veneration — terms nearly or quite synonymous in aboriginal theology. 

 This was especially noticeable among that race whose home was in the 

 neighborhood of the Great Lakes. In the Ojibway country a rattlesnake 

 was never killed except under some stress of circumstances, when " it 

 was accompanied by forms and ceremonies, and a sacrifice was left near 

 the carcass." Some Atlantic coast tribes made it a water-god — an easy 

 suggestion from the sinuous, serpent-like course of a river. "Kennebec, 



