ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 79 
pressive, is so very barren in that, that they have no 
word to express God or any the least of our myster- 
ies." These people acknowledge no deity 
with a sense of religion." They have no ex- 
terior gestures which might convince us they had the 
least esteem for a deity; neither temple, priest, sacri- 
fice, nor any other mark of religion is to be met with 
among them." ''A man must not go to 
America, that has a mind to become a martyr for his 
faith. These savages never murder anybody on that 
score; they leave every one at liberty to believe what 
he pleases." 
It is proper to remark, however, that the Indian races 
no longer represent man in a low state of savagery. 
All the North American Indians use the bow and are 
acquainted with the use of fire, and have probably not 
been cannibals, with rare exceptions, for centuries be- 
fore the discovery of this continent by Columbus. 
Of the habits of man in a primitive state we have no 
knowledge, except what can be gathered by inference 
from isolated savage tribes. The Indians of to-day 
must be regarded as having passed out of a state of 
savagery, though they represent a stage of barbarism.* 
It is well known that nearly all American races have 
acquired some of the arts, such as the making of imple- 
ments, pottery, dwellings, clothing, etc. With this pro- 
gress their early customs and habits have changed. 
But all tribes have not moved forward with the same 
regularity and rapidity; climate and food probably de- 
termine this to some extent. However, by drawing ex- 
* For a comprehensive distinction between the condition of savagery 
and that of barbarism, see Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society. 
