REDMEN ; SOME OF THEIR THOUGHTS. 13 
of the confusion, the owl, prowling about, found a 
package so carefully done up that he thought it must 
contain something very valuable ; so he opened it. and 
out came the darkness in which he has ever since had 
to live. Later, the hawks and other big birds found, 
that that generally bold little bird the keskedie, disin- 
clined to fight just then, had bandaged his head with 
white cotton and, pretending to be ill, had remained at 
home, for which act he was compelled by the big birds 
always to wear his bandage, as he does, in the white 
marks round his head, to this jiay. 
The Redman, therefore is utterly without the most 
remote idea of fixity of species in either of the forms 
in which that has been conceived by civilized men ; so 
that there is no possibility in this early stage of thought 
of any classification of beings. 
The distinction, then, between the primitive man's 
conception of differences of bodily form and ours is this. 
We, even the most unscientific of us, have deeply im- 
brued in our minds a classification of natural objects ac- 
cording to certain qualities in their bodily form, which 
qualities under ordinary circumstances are unchange- 
able, so that we distinguish, according to certain fixed • 
qualities, a stone from a tree, and both these from an i 
animal, and further, by more minute marks, we dis^ 
tinguish one kind of stone from another, one tree from' ■ 
another, one animal from another ; but the primitive 
thinker, recognizing quite unlimited diversity of bodily 
form, unchecked by any idea of fixity of species, is utterly 
unable to form the most elementary classification, and 
regards each one of the quite infinitely numerous beings • 
which surround him, the essential part of each of which 
