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MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION.

seems, receives different names in different circumstances. Myth comes in; the sky is a God; a Manitou dwelling in the north sends ice and snow; another dwells in the waters, and many in the winds.[1] The Père Allouez[2] says, "They recognise no sovereign of heaven nor earth." Here the good father is at variance with Master Thomas Heriot, "that learned Mathematician" (1588). In Virginia "there is one chiefe god, that has beene from all eternitie," who "made other gods of a principall order."[3] Near New Plymouth, Kiehtan was the chief god, and the souls of the just abode in his mansions.[4]

A curious account of Red Indian religion may be extracted from a work styled A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner during a Thirty Years Residence among the Indians (New York, 1830). Tanner was caught when a boy, and lived as an Indian, even in religion. The Great Spirit constantly appears in his story as a moral and protecting deity, whose favour and help may be won by prayers, which are

  1. The Confessions of Kah-ge-ga-gah Bowh, a converted Crane of the Ojibbeways, may be rather a suspicious document. Kah, to shorten his noble name, became a preacher and platform-speaker of somewhat windy eloquence, according to Mr. Longfellow, who had heard him. His report is that in youth he sought the favour of the Manitous (Mon-e-doos he calls them), but also revered Ke-sha-mon-e-doo, the benevolent spirit, "who made the earth with all its variety and smiling beauty." But his narrative is very unlike the Indian account of the manufacture of the world by this or that animal, already given in "Myths of the Origin of Things." The benevolent spirit, according to Kah's father, a medicine-man, dwelt in the sun (Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, London, s. a. pp. 4–5). Practical and good-natured actions of the Great Spirit are recorded on p. 35. He directs starving travellers by means of dreams.
  2. Relations, 1667, p. 1.
  3. Arber, Captain John Smith, p. 321.
  4. Op. cit., p. 768.