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The religious belief of the North-American Indians seems, on a
first view, anomalous and contradictory. It certainly is so, if we
adopt the popular impression. Romance, Poetry, and Rhetoric point,
on the one hand, to the august conception of a one all-ruling Deity,
a Great Spirit, omniscient and omnipresent; and we are called to
admire the untutored intellect which could conceive a thought too
vast for Socrates and Plato. On the other hand, we find a chaos of
degrading, ridiculous, and incoherent superstitions. A closer
examination will show that the contradiction is more apparent than
real. We will begin with the lowest forms of Indian belief, and
thence trace it upward to the highest conceptions to which the
unassisted mind of the savage attained.
To the Indian, the material world is sentient and intelligent.
Birds, beasts, and reptiles have ears for human prayers, and are
endowed with an influence on human destiny. A mysterious and
inexplicable power resides in inanimate things. They, too, can
listen to the voice of man, and influence his life for evil or for
good. Lakes, rivers, and waterfalls are sometimes the dwelling-place
of spirits; but more frequently they are themselves living beings,
to be propitiated by prayers and offerings. The lake has a soul; and
so has the river, and the cataract. Each can hear the words of men,
and each can be pleased or offended. In the silence of a forest, the
gloom of a deep ravine, resides a living mystery, indefinite, but
redoubtable. Through all the works of Nature or of man, nothing
exists, however seemingly trivial, that may not be endowed with a
secret power for blessing or for bane.
Men and animals are closely akin. Each species of animal has its
great archetype, its progenitor or king, who is supposed to exist
somewhere, prodigious in size, though in shape and nature like his
subjects. A belief prevails, vague, but perfectly apparent, that men
themselves owe their first parentage to beasts, birds, or reptiles,
as bears, wolves, tortoises, or cranes; and the names of the totemic
clans, borrowed in nearly every case from animals, are the
reflection of this idea.
| [This belief occasionally takes a perfectly definite
shape. There was a tradition among Northern and Western
tribes, that men were created from the carcasses of
beasts, birds, and fishes, by Manabozho, a mythical
personage, to be described hereafter. The Amikouas, or
People of the Beaver, an Algonquin tribe of Lake Huron,
claimed descent from the carcass of the great original
beaver, or father of the beavers. They believed that the
rapids and cataracts on the French River and the Upper
Ottawa were caused by dams made by their amphibious
ancestor. (See the tradition in Perrot, Mémoire sur les
Mœurs, Coustumes et Relligion des Sauvages de l'Amérique
Septentrionale, p. 20.) Charlevoix tells the same story.
Each Indian was supposed to inherit something of the
nature of the animal whence he sprung.] |
An Indian hunter was always anxious to propitiate the animals he
sought to kill. He has often been known to address a wounded bear in
a long harangue of apology. [McKinney, Tour to the Lakes, 284,
mentions the discomposure of a party of Indians when shown a stuffed
moose. Thinking that its spirit would be offended at the indignity
shown to its remains, they surrounded it, making apologetic
speeches, and blowing tobacco-smoke at it as a propitiatory
offering.] The bones of the beaver were treated with especial
tenderness, and carefully kept from the dogs, lest the spirit of the
dead beaver, or his surviving brethren, should take offence. [This
superstition was very prevalent, and numerous examples of it occur
in old and recent writers, from Father Le Jeune to Captain Carver.]
This solicitude was not confined to animals, but extended to
inanimate things. A remarkable example occurred among the Hurons, a
people comparatively advanced, who, to propitiate their
fishing-nets, and persuade them to do their office with effect,
married them every year to two young girls of the tribe, with a
ceremony more formal than that observed in the case of mere human
wedlock.1 The fish, too, no less than
the nets, must be propitiated; and to this end they were addressed
every evening from the fishing-camp by one of the party chosen for
that function, who exhorted them to take courage and be caught,
assuring them that the utmost respect should be shown to their
bones. The harangue, which took place after the evening meal, was
made in solemn form; and while it lasted, the whole party, except
the speaker, were required to lie on their backs, silent and
motionless, around the fire.2
Besides ascribing life and intelligence to the material world,
animate and inanimate, the Indian believes in supernatural
existences, known among the Algonquins as "Manitous", and among the
Iroquois and Hurons as "Okies" or "Otkons". These words comprehend
all forms of supernatural being, from the highest to the lowest,
with the exception, possibly, of certain diminutive fairies or
hobgoblins, and certain giants and anomalous monsters, which appear
under various forms, grotesque and horrible, in the Indian fireside
legends. [Many tribes have tales of diminutive beings, which, in the
absence of a better word, may be called fairies. In the Travels of
Lewis and Clarke, there is mention of a hill on the Missouri,
supposed to be haunted by them. These Western fairies correspond to
the "Puck Wudj Ininee" of Ojibwa tradition. As an example of the
monsters alluded to, see the Saginaw story of the Weendigoes, in
Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, II. 105.] There are local manitous of
streams, rocks, mountains, cataracts, and forests. The conception of
these beings betrays, for the most part, a striking poverty of
imagination. In nearly every case, when they reveal themselves to
mortal sight, they bear the semblance of beasts, reptiles, or birds,
in shapes unusual or distorted. [The figure of a large bird is
perhaps the most common,--as, for example, the good spirit of Rock
Island: "He was white, with wings like a swan, but ten times
larger."--Autobiography of Blackhawk, 70.] There are other manitous
without local habitation, some good, some evil, countless in number
and indefinite in attributes. They fill the world, and control the
destinies of men,--that is to say, of Indians: for the primitive
Indian holds that the white man lives under a spiritual rule
distinct from that which governs his own fate. These beings, also,
appear for the most part in the shape of animals. Sometimes,
however, they assume human proportions; but more frequently they
take the form of stones, which, being broken, are found full of
living blood and flesh.
Each primitive Indian has his guardian manitou, to whom he looks for
counsel, guidance, and protection. These spiritual allies are gained
by the following process. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, the
Indian boy blackens his face, retires to some solitary place, and
remains for days without food. Superstitious expectancy and the
exhaustion of abstinence rarely fail of their results. His sleep is
haunted by visions, and the form which first or most often appears
is that of his guardian manitou,--a beast, a bird, a fish, a
serpent, or some other object, animate or inanimate. An eagle or a
bear is the vision of a destined warrior; a wolf, of a successful
hunter; while a serpent foreshadows the future medicine-man, or,
according to others, portends disaster.3
The young Indian thenceforth wears about his person the object
revealed in his dream, or some portion of it,--as a bone, a feather,
a snake-skin, or a tuft of hair. This, in the modern language of the
forest and prairie, is known as his "medicine." The Indian yields to
it a sort of worship, propitiates it with offerings of tobacco,
thanks it in prosperity, and upbraids it in disaster.4
If his medicine fails to bring the desired success, he will
sometimes discard it and adopt another. The superstition now becomes
mere fetich-worship, since the Indian regards the mysterious object
which he carries about him rather as an embodiment than as a
representative of a supernatural power.
Indian belief recognizes also another and very different class of
beings. Besides the giants and monsters of legendary lore, other
conceptions may be discerned, more or less distinct, and of a
character partly mythical. Of these the most conspicuous is that
remarkable personage of Algonquin tradition, called Manabozho,
Messou, Michabou, Nanabush, or the Great Hare. As each species of
animal has its archetype or king, so, among the Algonquins,
Manabozho is king of all these animal kings. Tradition is diverse as
to his origin. According to the most current belief, his father was
the West-Wind, and his mother a great-granddaughter of the Moon. His
character is worthy of such a parentage. Sometimes he is a wolf, a
bird, or a gigantic hare, surrounded by a court of quadrupeds;
sometimes he appears in human shape, majestic in stature and
wondrous in endowment, a mighty magician, a destroyer of serpents
and evil manitous; sometimes he is a vain and treacherous imp, full
of childish whims and petty trickery, the butt and victim of men,
beasts, and spirits. His powers of transformation are without limit;
his curiosity and malice are insatiable; and of the numberless
legends of which he is the hero, the greater part are as trivial as
they are incoherent.5 It does not appear
that Manabozho was ever an object of worship; yet, despite his
absurdity, tradition declares him to be chief among the manitous, in
short, the "Great Spirit." ["Presque toutes les Nations Algonquines
ont donné le nom de Grand Lièvre au Premier Esprit, quelques-uns
l'appellent Michabou (Manabozho)."--Charlevoix, Journal Historique,
344.] It was he who restored the world, submerged by a deluge. He
was hunting in company with a certain wolf, who was his brother, or,
by other accounts, his grandson, when his quadruped relative fell
through the ice of a frozen lake, and was at once devoured by
certain serpents lurking in the depths of the waters. Manabozho,
intent on revenge, transformed himself into the stump of a tree, and
by this artifice surprised and slew the king of the serpents, as he
basked with his followers in the noontide sun. The serpents, who
were all manitous, caused, in their rage, the waters of the lake to
deluge the earth. Manabozho climbed a tree, which, in answer to his
entreaties, grew as the flood rose around it, and thus saved him
from the vengeance of the evil spirits. Submerged to the neck, he
looked abroad on the waste of waters, and at length descried the
bird known as the loon, to whom he appealed for aid in the task of
restoring the world. The loon dived in search of a little mud, as
material for reconstruction, but could not reach the bottom. A
musk-rat made the same attempt, but soon reappeared floating on his
back, and apparently dead. Manabozho, however, on searching his
paws, discovered in one of them a particle of the desired mud, and
of this, together with the body of the loon, created the world anew.6
There are various forms of this tradition, in some of which
Manabozho appears, not as the restorer, but as the creator of the
world, forming mankind from the carcasses of beasts, birds, and
fishes.7 Other stories represent him as
marrying a female musk-rat, by whom he became the progenitor of the
human race.8
Searching for some higher conception of supernatural existence, we
find, among a portion of the primitive Algonquins, traces of a vague
belief in a spirit dimly shadowed forth under the name of Atahocan,
to whom it does not appear that any attributes were ascribed or any
worship offered, and of whom the Indians professed to know nothing
whatever;9 but there is no evidence that
this belief extended beyond certain tribes of the Lower St.
Lawrence. Others saw a supreme manitou in the Sun.10
The Algonquins believed also in a malignant manitou, in whom the
early missionaries failed not to recognize the Devil, but who was
far less dreaded than his wife. She wore a robe made of the hair of
her victims, for she was the cause of death; and she it was whom, by
yelling, drumming, and stamping, they sought to drive away from the
sick. Sometimes, at night, she was seen by some terrified squaw in
the forest, in shape like a flame of fire; and when the vision was
announced to the circle crouched around the lodge-fire, they burned
a fragment of meat to appease the female fiend.
The East, the West, the North, and the South were vaguely
personified as spirits or manitous. Some of the winds, too, were
personal existences. The West-Wind, as we have seen, was father of
Manabozho. There was a Summer-Maker and a Winter-Maker; and the
Indians tried to keep the latter at bay by throwing firebrands into
the air.
When we turn from the Algonquin family of tribes to that of the
Iroquois, we find another cosmogony, and other conceptions of
spiritual existence. While the earth was as yet a waste of waters,
there was, according to Iroquois and Huron traditions, a heaven with
lakes, streams, plains, and forests, inhabited by animals, by
spirits, and, as some affirm, by human beings. Here a certain female
spirit, named Ataentsic, was once chasing a bear, which, slipping
through a hole, fell down to the earth. Ataentsic's dog followed,
when she herself, struck with despair, jumped after them. Others
declare that she was kicked out of heaven by the spirit, her
husband, for an amour with a man; while others, again, hold the
belief that she fell in the attempt to gather for her husband the
medicinal leaves of a certain tree. Be this as it may, the animals
swimming in the watery waste below saw her falling, and hastily met
in council to determine what should be done. The case was referred
to the beaver. The beaver commended it to the judgment of the
tortoise, who thereupon called on the other animals to dive, bring
up mud, and place it on his back. Thus was formed a floating island,
on which Ataentsic fell; and here, being pregnant, she was soon
delivered of a daughter, who in turn bore two boys, whose paternity
is unexplained. They were called Taouscaron and Jouskeha, and
presently fell to blows, Jouskeha killing his brother with the horn
of a stag. The back of the tortoise grew into a world full of
verdure and life; and Jouskeha, with his grandmother, Ataentsic,
ruled over its destinies.
[The above is the version of the story given by
Brébeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 86 (Cramoisy). No
two Indians told it precisely alike, though nearly all
the Hurons and Iroquois agreed as to its essential
points. Compare Vanderdonck, Cusick, Sagard, and other
writers. According to Vanderdonck, Ataentsic became
mother of a deer, a bear, and a wolf, by whom she
afterwards bore all the other animals, mankind included.
Brébeuf found also among the Hurons a tradition
inconsistent with that of Ataentsic, and bearing a trace
of Algonquin origin. It declares, that, in the
beginning, a man, a fox, and a skunk found themselves
together on an island, and that the man made the world
out of mud brought him by the skunk.
The Delawares, an Algonquin tribe, seem to have borrowed
somewhat of the Iroquois cosmogony, since they believed
that the earth was formed on the back of a tortoise.
According to some, Jouskeha became the father of the
human race; but, in the third generation, a deluge
destroyed his posterity, so that it was necessary to
transform animals into men.--Charlevoix, III. 345.] |
He is the Sun; she is the Moon. He is beneficent; but she is
malignant, like the female demon of the Algonquins. They have a bark
house, made like those of the Iroquois, at the end of the earth, and
they often come to feasts and dances in the Indian villages.
Jouskeha raises corn for himself, and makes plentiful harvests for
mankind. Sometimes he is seen, thin as a skeleton, with a spike of
shriveled corn in his hand, or greedily gnawing a human limb; and
then the Indians know that a grievous famine awaits them. He
constantly interposes between mankind and the malice of his wicked
grandmother, whom, at times, he soundly cudgels. It was he who made
lakes and streams: for once the earth was parched and barren, all
the water being gathered under the armpit of a colossal frog; but
Jouskeha pierced the armpit, and let out the water. No prayers were
offered to him, his benevolent nature rendering them superfluous.
| [Compare Brébeuf, as before cited, and Sagard,
Voyage des Hurons, p. 228.] |
The early writers call Jouskeha the creator of the world, and
speak of him as corresponding to the vague Algonquin deity, Atahocan.
Another deity appears in Iroquois mythology, with equal claims to be
regarded as supreme. He is called Areskoui, or Agreskoui, and his
most prominent attributes are those of a god of war. He was often
invoked, and the flesh of animals and of captive enemies was burned
in his honor.
[Father Jogues saw a female prisoner burned to Areskoui, and two
bears offered to him to atone for the sin of not burning more
captives.--Lettre de Jogues, 6 Aug., 1643.] Like Jouskeha, he was
identified with the sun; and he is perhaps to be regarded as the
same being, under different attributes. Among the Iroquois proper,
or Five Nations, there was also a divinity called Tarenyowagon, or
Teharonhiawagon,11 whose place and
character it is very difficult to determine. In some traditions he
appears as the son of Jouskeha. He had a prodigious influence; for
it was he who spoke to men in dreams. The Five Nations recognized
still another superhuman personage,--plainly a deified chief or
hero. This was Taounyawatha, or Hiawatha, said to be a divinely
appointed messenger, who made his abode on earth for the political
and social instruction of the chosen race, and whose counterpart is
to be found in the traditions of the Peruvians, Mexicans, and other
primitive nations.12
Close examination makes it evident that the primitive Indian's idea
of a Supreme Being was a conception no higher than might have been
expected. The moment he began to contemplate this object of his
faith, and sought to clothe it with attributes, it became finite,
and commonly ridiculous. The Creator of the World stood on the level
of a barbarous and degraded humanity, while a natural tendency
became apparent to look beyond him to other powers sharing his
dominion. The Indian belief, if developed, would have developed into
a system of polytheism.
| [Some of the early writers could discover no trace
of belief in a supreme spirit of any kind. Perrot, after
a life spent among the Indians, ignores such an idea.
Allouez emphatically denies that it existed among the
tribes of Lake Superior. (Relation, 1667, 11.) He adds,
however, that the Sacs and Foxes believed in a great _génie_,
who lived not far from the French settlements.--Ibid.,
21.] |
In the primitive Indian's conception of a God the idea of moral
good has no part. His deity does not dispense justice for this world
or the next, but leaves mankind under the power of subordinate
spirits, who fill and control the universe. Nor is the good and evil
of these inferior beings a moral good and evil. The good spirit is
the spirit that gives good luck, and ministers to the necessities
and desires of mankind: the evil spirit is simply a malicious agent
of disease, death, and mischance.
In no Indian language could the early missionaries find a word to
express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki meant anything endowed with
supernatural powers, from a snake-skin, or a greasy Indian conjurer,
up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a
circumlocution,--"The Great Chief of Men," or "He who lives in the
Sky."
[See "Divers Sentimens," appended to the Relation of 1635, § 27; and
also many other passages of early missionaries.] Yet it should seem
that the idea of a supreme controlling spirit might naturally arise
from the peculiar character of Indian belief. The idea that each
race of animals has its archetype or chief would easily suggest the
existence of a supreme chief of the spirits or of the human race,--a
conception imperfectly shadowed forth in Manabozho. The Jesuit
missionaries seized this advantage. "If each sort of animal has its
king," they urged, "so, too, have men; and as man is above all the
animals, so is the spirit that rules over men the master of all the
other spirits." The Indian mind readily accepted the idea, and
tribes in no sense Christian quickly rose to the belief in one
controlling spirit. The Great Spirit became a distinct existence, a
pervading power in the universe, and a dispenser of justice. Many
tribes now pray to him, though still clinging obstinately to their
ancient superstitions; and with some, as the heathen portion of the
modern Iroquois, he is clothed with attributes of moral good.
| [In studying the writers of the last and of the
present century, it is to be remembered that their
observations were made upon savages who had been for
generations in contact, immediate or otherwise, with the
doctrines of Christianity. Many observers have
interpreted the religious ideas of the Indians after
preconceived ideas of their own; and it may safely be
affirmed that an Indian will respond with a grunt of
acquiescence to any question whatever touching his
spiritual state. Loskiel and the simple-minded
Heckewelder write from a missionary point of view;
Adair, to support a theory of descent from the Jews; the
worthy theologian, Jarvis, to maintain his dogma, that
all religious ideas of the heathen world are perversions
of revelation; and so, in a greater or less degree, of
many others. By far the most close and accurate
observers of Indian superstition were the French and
Italian Jesuits of the first half of the seventeenth
century. Their opportunities were unrivalled; and they
used them in a spirit of faithful inquiry, accumulating
facts, and leaving theory to their successors. Of recent
American writers, no one has given so much attention to
the subject as Mr. Schoolcraft; but, in view of his
opportunities and his zeal, his results are most
unsatisfactory. The work in six large quarto volumes,
History, Condition, and Prospects of Indian Tribes,
published by Government under his editorship, includes
the substance of most of his previous writings. It is a
singularly crude and illiterate production, stuffed with
blunders and contradictions, giving evidence on every
page of a striking unfitness either for historical or
philosophical inquiry, and taxing to the utmost the
patience of those who would extract what is valuable in
it from its oceans of pedantic verbiage.] |
The primitive Indian believed in the immortality of the soul,13
but he did not always believe in a state of future reward and
punishment. Nor, when such a belief existed, was the good to be
rewarded a moral good, or the evil to be punished a moral evil.
Skilful hunters, brave warriors, men of influence and consideration,
went, after death, to the happy hunting-ground; while the slothful,
the cowardly, and the weak were doomed to eat serpents and ashes in
dreary regions of mist and darkness. In the general belief, however,
there was but one land of shades for all alike. The spirits, in form
and feature as they had been in life, wended their way through dark
forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten
wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching posture of the
sick, and, when night came, hunted the shades of animals, with the
shades of bows and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks: for
all things, animate and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all
passed together to the gloomy country of the dead.
The belief respecting the land of souls varied greatly in different
tribes and different individuals. Among the Huron there were those
who held that departed spirits pursued their journey through the
sky, along the Milky Way, while the souls of dogs took another
route, by certain constellations, known as the "Way of the Dogs." [Sagard,
Voyage des Huron, 233.]
At intervals of ten or twelve years, the Huron, the Neutrals, and
other kindred tribes, were accustomed to collect the bones of their
dead, and deposit them, with great ceremony, in a common place of
burial. The whole nation was sometimes assembled at this solemnity;
and hundreds of corpses, brought from their temporary
resting-places, were inhumed in one capacious pit. From this hour
the immortality of their souls began. They took wing, as some
affirmed, in the shape of pigeons; while the greater number declared
that they journeyed on foot, and in their own likeness, to the land
of shades, bearing with them the ghosts of the wampum-belts,
beaver-skins, bows, arrows, pipes, kettles, beads, and rings buried
with them in the common grave. [The practice of burying treasures
with the dead is not peculiar to the North American aborigines.
Thus, the London Times of Oct. 25, 1885, describing the funeral
rites of Lord Palmerston, says: "And as the words, 'Dust to dust,
ashes to ashes,' were pronounced, the chief mourner, as a last
precious offering to the dead, threw into the grave several diamond
and gold rings."] But as the spirits of the old and of children are
too feeble for the march, they are forced to stay behind, lingering
near their earthly villages, where the living often hear the
shutting of their invisible cabin-doors, and the weak voices of the
disembodied children driving birds from their corn-fields. [Brébeuf,
Relation des Huron, 1636, 99 (Cramoisy).] An endless variety of
incoherent fancies is connected with the Indian idea of a future
life. They commonly owe their origin to dreams, often to the dreams
of those in extreme sickness, who, on awaking, supposed that they
had visited the other world, and related to the wondering bystanders
what they had seen.
The Indian land of souls is not always a region of shadows and
gloom. The Huron sometimes represented the souls of their
dead--those of their dogs included--as dancing joyously in the
presence of Ataentsic and Jouskeha. According to some Algonquin
traditions, heaven was a scene of endless festivity, the ghosts
dancing to the sound of the rattle and the drum, and greeting with
hospitable welcome the occasional visitor from the living world: for
the spirit-land was not far off, and roving hunters sometimes passed
its confines unawares.
Most of the traditions agree, however, that the spirits, on their
journey heavenward, were beset with difficulties and perils. There
was a swift river which must be crossed on a log that shook beneath
their feet, while a ferocious dog opposed their passage, and drove
many into the abyss. This river was full of sturgeon and other fish,
which the ghosts speared for their subsistence. Beyond was a narrow
path between moving rocks, which each instant crashed together,
grinding to atoms the less nimble of the pilgrims who essayed to
pass. The Huron believed that a personage named Oscotarach, or the
Head-Piercer, dwelt in a bark house beside the path, and that it was
his office to remove the brains from the heads of all who went by,
as a necessary preparation for immortality. This singular idea is
found also in some Algonquin traditions, according to which,
however, the brain is afterwards restored to its owner.
| [On Indian ideas of another life, compare Sagard,
the Jesuit Relations, Perrot, Charlevoix, and Lafitau,
with Tanner, James, Schoolcraft, and the Appendix to
Morse's Indian Report. |
Le Clerc recounts a singular story, current in his time among the
Algonquins of Gaspé and Northern New Brunswick. The favorite son of
an old Indian died; whereupon the father, with a party of friends,
set out for the land of souls to recover him. It was only necessary
to wade through a shallow lake, several days' journey in extent.
This they did, sleeping at night on platforms of poles which
supported them above the water. At length they arrived, and were met
by Papkootparout, the Indian Pluto, who rushed on them in a rage,
with his war-club upraised; but, presently relenting, changed his
mind, and challenged them to a game of ball. They proved the
victors, and won the stakes, consisting of corn, tobacco, and
certain fruits, which thus became known to mankind. The bereaved
father now begged hard for his son's soul, and Papkootparout at last
gave it to him, in the form and size of a nut, which, by pressing it
hard between his hands, he forced into a small leather bag. The
delighted parent carried it back to earth, with instructions to
insert it in the body of his son, who would thereupon return to
life. When the adventurers reached home, and reported the happy
issue of their journey, there was a dance of rejoicing; and the
father, wishing to take part in it, gave his son's soul to the
keeping of a squaw who stood by. Being curious to see it, she opened
the bag; on which it escaped at once, and took flight for the realms
of Papkootparout, preferring them to the abodes of the living.--Le
Clerc, Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie, 310-328.]
Dreams were to the Indian a universal oracle. They revealed to him
his guardian spirit, taught him the cure of his diseases, warned him
of the devices of sorcerers, guided him to the lurking-places of his
enemy or the haunts of game, and unfolded the secrets of good and
evil destiny. The dream was a mysterious and inexorable power, whose
least behests must be obeyed to the letter,--a source, in every
Indian town, of endless mischief and abomination. There were
professed dreamers, and professed interpreters of dreams. One of the
most noted festivals among the Hurons and Iroquois was the Dream
Feast, a scene of frenzy, where the actors counterfeited madness,
and the town was like a bedlam turned loose. Each pretended to have
dreamed of something necessary to his welfare, and rushed from house
to house, demanding of all he met to guess his secret requirement
and satisfy it.
Believing that the whole material world was instinct with powers to
influence and control his fate, that good and evil spirits, and
existences nameless and indefinable, filled all Nature, that a
pervading sorcery was above, below, and around him, and that issues
of life and death might be controlled by instruments the most
unnoticeable and seemingly the most feeble, the Indian lived in
perpetual fear. The turning of a leaf, the crawling of an insect,
the cry of a bird, the creaking of a bough, might be to him the
mystic signal of weal or woe.
An Indian community swarmed with sorcerers, medicine-men, and
diviners, whose functions were often united in the same person. The
sorcerer, by charms, magic songs, magic feasts, and the beating of
his drum, had power over the spirits and those occult influences
inherent in animals and inanimate things. He could call to him the
souls of his enemies. They appeared before him in the form of
stones. He chopped and bruised them with his hatchet; blood and
flesh issued forth; and the intended victim, however distant,
languished and died. Like the sorcerer of the Middle Ages, he made
images of those he wished to destroy, and, muttering incantations,
punctured them with an awl, whereupon the persons represented
sickened and pined away.
The Indian doctor relied far more on magic than on natural remedies.
Dreams, beating of the drum, songs, magic feasts and dances, and
howling to frighten the female demon from his patient, were his
ordinary methods of cure.
The prophet, or diviner, had various means of reading the secrets of
futurity, such as the flight of birds, and the movements of water
and fire. There was a peculiar practice of divination very general
in the Algonquin family of tribes, among some of whom it still
subsists. A small, conical lodge was made by planting poles in a
circle, lashing the tops together at the height of about seven feet
from the ground, and closely covering them with hides. The prophet
crawled in, and closed the aperture after him. He then beat his drum
and sang his magic songs to summon the spirits, whose weak, shrill
voices were soon heard, mingled with his lugubrious chanting, while
at intervals the juggler paused to interpret their communications to
the attentive crowd seated on the ground without. During the whole
scene, the lodge swayed to and fro with a violence which has
astonished many a civilized beholder, and which some of the Jesuits
explain by the ready solution of a genuine diabolic intervention.
| [This practice was first observed by Champlain. (See
"Pioneers of France in the New World." ) From his time
to the present, numerous writers have remarked upon it.
Le Jeune, in the Relation of 1637, treats it at some
length. The lodge was sometimes of a cylindrical,
instead of a conical form.] |
The sorcerers, medicine-men, and diviners did not usually
exercise the function of priests. Each man sacrificed for himself to
the powers he wished to propitiate, whether his guardian spirit, the
spirits of animals, or the other beings of his belief. The most
common offering was tobacco, thrown into the fire or water; scraps
of meat were sometimes burned to the manitous; and, on a few rare
occasions of public solemnity, a white dog, the mystic animal of
many tribes, was tied to the end of an upright pole, as a sacrifice
to some superior spirit, or to the sun, with which the superior
spirits were constantly confounded by the primitive Indian. In
recent times, when Judaism and Christianity have modified his
religious ideas, it has been, and still is, the practice to
sacrifice dogs to the Great Spirit. On these public occasions, the
sacrificial function is discharged by chiefs, or by warriors
appointed for the purpose.
[Many of the Indian feasts were feasts of
sacrifice,--sometimes to the guardian spirit of the
host, sometimes to an animal of which he has dreamed,
sometimes to a local or other spirit. The food was first
offered in a loud voice to the being to be propitiated,
after which the guests proceeded to devour it for him.
This unique method of sacrifice was practiced at
war-feasts and similar solemnities. For an excellent
account of Indian religious feasts, see Perrot, Chap. V.
One of the most remarkable of Indian sacrifices was that
practised by the Huron in the case of a person drowned
or frozen to death. The flesh of the deceased was cut
off; and thrown into a fire made for the purpose, as an
offering of propitiation to the spirits of the air or
water. What remained of the body was then buried near
the fire.--Brébeuf, Relation des Huron, 1636, 108.
The tribes of Virginia, as described by Beverly and
others, not only had priests who offered sacrifice, but
idols and houses of worship.] |
Among the Huron and Iroquois, and indeed all the stationary
tribes, there was an incredible number of mystic ceremonies,
extravagant, puerile, and often disgusting, designed for the cure of
the sick or for the general weal of the community. Most of their
observances seem originally to have been dictated by dreams, and
transmitted as a sacred heritage from generation to generation. They
consisted in an endless variety of dances, masqueradings, and
nondescript orgies; and a scrupulous adherence to all the
traditional forms was held to be of the last moment, as the
slightest failure in this respect might entail serious calamities.
If children were seen in their play imitating any of these
mysteries, they were grimly rebuked and punished. In many tribes
secret magical societies existed, and still exist, into which
members are initiated with peculiar ceremonies. These associations
are greatly respected and feared. They have charms for love, war,
and private revenge, and exert a great, and often a very mischievous
influence. The societies of the Metai and the Wabeno, among the
Northern Algonquins, are conspicuous examples; while other societies
of similar character have, for a century, been known to exist among
the Dahcotah.
| [The Friendly Society of the Spirit, of which the
initiatory ceremonies were seen and described by Carver
(Travels, 271), preserves to this day its existence and
its rites.] |
A notice of the superstitious ideas of the Indians would be
imperfect without a reference to the traditionary tales through
which these ideas are handed down from father to son. Some of these
tales can be traced back to the period of the earliest intercourse
with Europeans. One at least of those recorded by the first
missionaries, on the Lower St. Lawrence, is still current among the
tribes of the Upper Lakes. Many of them are curious combinations of
beliefs seriously entertained with strokes intended for humor and
drollery, which never fail to awaken peals of laughter in the
lodge-circle. Giants, dwarfs, cannibals, spirits, beasts, birds, and
anomalous monsters, transformations, tricks, and sorcery, form the
staple of the story. Some of the Iroquois tales embody conceptions
which, however preposterous, are of a bold and striking character;
but those of the Algonquins are, to an incredible degree, flimsy,
silly, and meaningless; nor are those of the Dahcotah tribes much
better. In respect to this wigwam lore, there is a curious
superstition of very wide prevalence. The tales must not be told in
summer; since at that season, when all Nature is full of life, the
spirits are awake, and, hearing what is said of them, may take
offence; whereas in winter they are fast sealed up in snow and ice,
and no longer capable of listening.
[The prevalence of this fancy among the Algonquins
in the remote parts of Canada is well established. The
writer found it also among the extreme western bands of
the Dahcotah. He tried, in the month of July, to
persuade an old chief, a noted story-teller, to tell him
some of the tales; but, though abundantly loquacious in
respect to his own adventures, and even his dreams, the
Indian obstinately refused, saying that winter was the
time for the tales, and that it was bad to tell them in
summer.
Mr. Schoolcraft has published a collection of Algonquin
tales, under the title of Algic Researches. Most of them
were translated by his wife, an educated Ojibwa
half-breed. This book is perhaps the best of Mr.
Schoolcraft's works, though its value is much impaired
by the want of a literal rendering, and the introduction
of decorations which savor more of a popular monthly
magazine than of an Indian wigwam. Mrs. Eastman's
interesting
Legends of the Sioux (Dahcotah) is not free from the
same defect. Other tales are scattered throughout the
works of Mr. Schoolcraft and various modern writers.
Some are to be found in the works of Lafitau and the
other Jesuits. But few of the Iroquois legends have been
printed, though a considerable number have been written
down. The singular
History of the Five Nations, by the old Tuscarora
Indian, Cusick, gives the substance of some of them.
Others will be found in Clark's History of Onondaga.] |
It is obvious that the Indian mind has
never seriously occupied itself with any of the higher themes of
thought. The beings of its belief are not impersonations of the
forces of Nature, the courses of human destiny, or the movements of
human intellect, will, and passion. In the midst of Nature; the
Indian knew nothing of her laws. His perpetual reference of her
phenomena to occult agencies forestalled inquiry and precluded
inductive reasoning. If the wind blew with violence, it was because
the water-lizard, which makes the wind, had crawled out of his pool;
if the lightning was sharp and frequent, it was because the young of
the thunder-bird were restless in their nest; if a blight fell upon
the corn, it was because the Corn Spirit was angry; and if the
beavers were shy and difficult to catch, it was because they had
taken offence at seeing the bones of one of their race thrown to a
dog. Well, and even highly developed, in a few instances,--I allude
especially to the Iroquois,--with respect to certain points of
material concernment, the mind of the Indian in other respects was
and is almost hopelessly stagnant. The very traits that raise him
above the servile races are hostile to the kind and degree of
civilization which those races so easily attain. His intractable
spirit of independence, and the pride which forbids him to be an
imitator, reinforce but too strongly that savage lethargy of mind
from which it is so hard to rouse him. No race, perhaps, ever
offered greater difficulties to those laboring for its improvement.
To sum up the results of this examination, the primitive Indian was
as savage in his religion as in his life. He was divided between
fetich-worship and that next degree of religious development which
consists in the worship of deities embodied in the human form. His
conception of their attributes was such as might have been expected.
His gods were no whit better than himself. Even when he borrows from
Christianity the idea of a Supreme and Universal Spirit, his
tendency is to reduce Him to a local habitation and a bodily shape;
and this tendency disappears only in tribes that have been long in
contact with civilized white men. The primitive Indian, yielding his
untutored homage to One All-pervading and Omnipotent Spirit, is a
dream of poets, rhetoricians, and sentimentalists.
1 There are frequent allusions to this ceremony
in the early writers. The Algonquins of the Ottawa practised it, as
well as the Huron. Lalemant, in his chapter "Du Regne de Satan en
ces Contrées" (Relation des Hurons, 1639), says that it took place
yearly, in the middle of March. As it was indispensable that the
brides should be virgins, mere children were chosen. The net was
held between them; and its spirit, or oki, was harangued by one of
the chiefs, who exhorted him to do his part in furnishing the tribe
with food. Lalemant was told that the spirit of the net had once
appeared in human form to the Algonquins, complaining that he had
lost his wife, and warning them, that, unless they could find him
another equally immaculate, they would catch no more fish.
2 Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Huron, 257.
Other old writers make a similar statement.
3 Compare Cass, in North-American Review, Second
Series, XIII. 100. A turkey-buzzard, according to him, is the vision
of a medicine-man. I once knew an old Dahcotah chief, who was
greatly respected, but had never been to war, though belonging to a
family of peculiarly warlike propensities. The reason was, that, in
his initiatory fast, he had dreamed of an antelope,--the
peace-spirit of his people.
Women fast, as well as men,--always at the time of transition from
childhood to maturity. In the Narrative of John Tanner, there is an
account of an old woman who had fasted, in her youth, for ten days,
and throughout her life placed the firmest faith in the visions
which had appeared to her at that time. Among the Northern
Algonquins, the practice, down to a recent day, was almost
universal.
4 The author has seen a Dahcotah warrior open his
medicine-bag, talk with an air of affectionate respect to the bone,
feather, or horn within, and blow tobacco-smoke upon it as an
offering. "Medicines" are acquired not only by fasting, but by
casual dreams, and otherwise. They are sometimes even bought and
sold. For a curious account of medicine-bags and fetich-worship
among the Algonquins of Gaspé, see Le Clerc, Nouvelle Relation de la
Gaspésie, Chap. XIII.
5 Mr. Schoolcraft has collected many of these
tales. See his Algic Researches, Vol. I. Compare the stories of
Messou, given by Le Jeune (Relations, 1633, 1634), and the account
of Nanabush, by Edwin James, in his notes to Tanner's Narrative of
Captivity and Adventures during a Thirty-Years' Residence among the
Indians; also the account of the Great Hare, in the Mémoire of
Nicolas Perrot, Chaps. I., II.
6 This is a form of the story still current among
the remoter Algonquins. Compare the story of Messou, in Le Jeune,
Relation, 1633, 16. It is substantially the same.
7 In the beginning of all things, Manabozho, in
the form of the Great Hare, was on a raft, surrounded by animals who
acknowledged him as their chief. No land could be seen. Anxious to
create the world, the Great Hare persuaded the beaver to dive for
mud but the adventurous diver floated to the surface senseless. The
otter next tried, and failed like his predecessor. The musk-rat now
offered himself for the desperate task. He plunged, and, after
remaining a day and night beneath the surface, reappeared, floating
on his back beside the raft, apparently dead, and with all his paws
fast closed. On opening them, the other animals found in one of them
a grain of sand, and of this the Great Hare created the
world.--Perrot, Mémoire, Chap. I.
8 Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 16.--The musk-rat is
always a conspicuous figure in Algonquin cosmogony.
It is said that Messou, or Manabozho, once gave to an Indian the
gift of immortality, tied in a bundle, enjoining him never to open
it. The Indian's wife, however, impelled by curiosity, one day cut
the string, the precious gift flew out, and Indians have ever since
been subject to death. Le Jeune, Relation, 1634, 13.
91 Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 16; Relation, 1634,
13.
10 Biard, Relation, 1611, Chap. VIII.--This belief
was very prevalent. The Ottawa, according to Ragueneau (Relation des
Huron, 1648, 77), were accustomed to invoke the "Maker of Heaven" at
their feasts; but they recognized as distinct persons the Maker of
the Earth, the Maker of Winter, the God of the Waters, and the Seven
Spirits of the Wind. He says, at the same time, "The people of these
countries have received from their ancestors no knowledge of a God";
and he adds, that there is no sentiment of religion in this
invocation.
11 Le Mercier, Relation, 1670, 66; Dablon,
Relation, 1671, 17. Compare Cusick, Megapolensis, and Vanderdonck.
Some writers identify Tarenyowagon and Hiawatha. Vanderdonck assumes
that Areskoui is the Devil, and Tarenyowagon is God. Thus Indian
notions are often interpreted by the light of preconceived ideas.
12 For the tradition of Hiawatha, see Clark,
History of Onondaga, I. 21. It will also be found in Schoolcraft's
Notes on the Iroquois, and in his History, Condition, and Prospects
of Indian Tribes.
The Iroquois name for God is Hawenniio, sometimes written Owayneo;
but this use of the word is wholly due to the missionaries.
Hawenniio is an Iroquois verb, and means, "he rules, he is master".
There is no Iroquois word which, in its primitive meaning, can be
interpreted, the Great Spirit, or God. On this subject, see Études
Philologiques sur quelques Langues Sauvages (Montreal, 1866), where
will also be found a curious exposure of a few of Schoolcraft's
ridiculous blunders in this connection.
13 The exceptions are exceedingly rare. Father
Gravier says that a Peoria Indian once told him that there was no
future life. It would be difficult to find another instance of the
kind.
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
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