The Apache is blessed or cursed, as we may choose to view, with a multiplicity of ghostly guardians, many of whom may be ignored in times of prosperity, but none of whom it would be wise to contemn in the hour of danger and adversity.
It may be well to commence with the
Chidin or Chindi.
The interpretation given for this word by the Mexican captives, living among the Apaches and Navajoes, is diablos, or devils, but the correct translation is "ghosts". They are the spirits of the dead, who, in a collective sense, may be taken as the ancestors of the tribe, and consequently, at the outset, there is formed a cult almost identical with the ancestor-worship of the Chinese and Romans. It is not improbable that, in the earlier periods of their history, the dwellers along the Yang-tze and the Tiber offered to the collective manes of their horde or clan the sacrifices afterwards reserved by each family for its founders.
This ghost-worship, or ancestor-worship—there is no need to quibble about names—is the most widely-recognised feature of American aboriginal religion.
The earliest Spanish missionaries ascertained that the Pueblo Indians in the valley of the Rio Grande were in the habit of making oblations of food to the spirits of their dead: a fact taken advantage of by the shrewd friars, who quietly substituted the Feast of All Saints for the pagan festival occurring almost on the same date (November Tst). Until the present time the Indians of Jeleta (New Mexico) cover the floor of their church with delicious specimens of culinary skill at the high-mass of the substituted festival.[1] In like manner, among the Hurons:
- ↑ Many of our Indians to this day will at each meal throw a crust of bread or fragment of meat into the fire, saying at the same time: "Eat, spirits of my ancestors."
