a wider place in the beliefs of North American tribes, who combined these adopted Christian conceptions with older native beliefs in powers of light and warmth and life and protection, of darkness and cold and death and destruction. Thus the two great antagonistic Beings became chiefs of the kindly and harmful spirits pervading the world and struggling for the mastery over it. Here the nature-religion of the savage was expanded and developed rather than set on foot by the foreigner. Among other American races, such combinations of foreign and native religious ideas are easy to find, though hard to analyse. In the extreme north-west, we may doubt any native origin in the semi-Christianized Kodiak's definition of Shljem Shoá the creator of heaven and earth, to whom offerings were made before and after the hunt, as contrasted with Ijak the bad spirit dwelling in the earth. In the extreme south-east may be found more originality among the Floridan Indians two or three centuries ago, for they are said to have paid solemn worship to the Bad Spirit Toia who plagued them with visions, but to have had small regard for the Good Spirit, who troubles himself little about mankind.[1] On the southern continent, Martius makes this characteristic remark as to the rude tribes of Brazil: 'All Indians have a lively conviction of the power of an evil principle over them; in many there dawns also a glimpse of the good; but they revere the one less than they fear the other. It might be thought that they hold the Good Being weaker in relation to the fate of man than the evil.' This generalization is to some extent supported by statements as to particular tribes. The Macusis are said to recognize the good creator Macunaima, 'he who works by night,' and his evil adversary Epel or Horiuch: of these people is is observed that 'All the powers of nature are products of the Good Spirit, when they do
- ↑ Waitz, 'Anthropologie,' vol. iii. pp. 182, 330, 335, 345; Le Jeune in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1637, p. 49; La Potherie, 'Hist. de l'Amer. Septentrionale,' Paris, 1722, vol. i. p. 121; J. G. Müller, p. 149, &c. Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 35, &c., 320, 412; Catlin, vol. i. p. 156; Cranz, 'Grönland,' p. 263.
