168 
cumvented by the still more cunning wolverine. Year after year, 
again, the salmon came to the Indian’s rivers from some unknown 
ocean home, as though they appeared for his special benefit alone. 
Tiiere were seasons when game abounded, and his camp was filled 
with meat; and other seasons when animals were so scarce that they 
seemed to avoid his neighbourhood deliberately. Then there were 
diseases that came suddenly and unseen, striking down as with 
invisible arrows the strong and the weak alike. Finally, many of 
the barriers that separated man from nature vanished in dreams and 
visions, when the sleeper seemed to travel in far distant places and 
to have contacts with the world of animals that were impossible in 
normal waking hours. 
All these things the Indian perceived and pondered. The earth 
to him was a flat expanse of land and water that ended somewhere 
beyond the horizon. The sky was similar to this earth, although man 
could see only its under side. Some tribes, observing perhaps the 
clouds that pass beneath each other anrl hide the faces of tlie sun and 
moon, believed there were several worlds above this one, and corres- 
pondingly several undei iieath. No Indian could conceive of the earth 
as an immense ball rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun, 
governed by the same mysterious forces that direct the course of an 
arrow from its bow. Astronomy, meteorology, physics, these and 
other sciences were as yet unborn, and the Indian inter]>reted the 
phenomena of nature in spiritual terms, ])rojecting his own mentality 
into the ])rocesses he saw at work around him. Spiritual forces akin 
to those in his own being caused the sun to rise and set, the storms to 
gather in the sky, the cataract to leap among the rocks, and the trees 
to bud in the springtime. A mentality similar in kind to his animated 
the birtl, the animal, and the fish. The same reason, the same 
emotions that actuated all his movements, actuated also all that 
moved on earth, in water, and in sky. Reason and emotions were 
present, it is true, in varying degrees, and accompanied by different 
powers, some greater and some less. But ultimately (although few 
if any Indians consciously reached this generalization) all life was 
one in kind, and all things, potentially at least, possessed life.^ 
Life was inseparable from force or power, and power could 
express itself in many ways and uinler many disguises. There was 
1 Thus Uic Ojibwa of lake Huron predieate a "soul” and a "shadow” even in rocks aiui stones. 
