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RELIGION] The decorative designs in question, paddle-stamp patterns, &c., akin to the motives on the wooden and stone stools from the Caribbean areas in the West Indies, have been found as far north as 36° in North Carolina and as far west as 84° in Tennessee and 89° in south-eastern Alabama. But the evidence does not prove the existence of Carib colonies at any time in any part of this region, but simply the migration from the West Indies to the North American coast of certain art features adopted by the Indians of the Timuquan and Muskogian Indians and (later) in part by the Cherokee. More recently (1907) Dr F. G. Speck, in a discussion of the aboriginal culture of the south-eastern states (Amer. Anthrop. vol. ix., n.s., pp. 287-295), cites as proof of Antillean or Caribbean influence in addition to that indicated by Holmes, the following: employment of the blow-gun in hunting, use of hammock as baby-cradle, peculiar storage-scaffold in one corner of house, plastering houses with clay, poisoning fish with vegetable juices. It is possible also that the North American coast may have been visited from time to time by small bodies of natives from the West Indies in search of the mythic fountain of youth (Bimini), the position of which had shifted from the Bahamas to Florida in its movement westward. Indeed, just about the time of the advent of the Europeans in this part of the world a number of Indians from Cuba, on such a quest, landed on the south-western shore of Florida, where they were captured by the Calusas, among whom they seem to have maintained a separate existence down to 1570 or later. This Arawakan colony, indicated on the map of linguistic stocks of American Indians north of Mexico, published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907, is the only one demonstrated to have existed, but there may have been others of a more temporary character. In the languages of this region there are to be detected perhaps a few loan-words from Arawakan or Cariban dialects. The exaggerated ideas entertained by some authorities concerning the “mound-builders” of the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi and their alleged “civilization” have led them to assume, without adequate proof, long-continued relations of the tribes inhabiting this part of the country in the past with the ancient peoples of Yucatan and Mexico, or even an origin of their culture from beyond the Gulf. But since these mounds were in all probability wholly the work of the modern Indians of this area or their immediate ancestors, and the greater part, if not all, of the art and industry represented therein lies easily within the capacity of the aborigines of North America, the “Mexican” theory in this form appears unnecessary to explain the facts. In its support stress has been laid upon the nature of some of the copper implements and ornaments, particularly the types of elaborate repoussé work from Etowah, Georgia, &c. That the repoussé work was not beyond the skill of the Indian was shown by Cushing in his study of “Primitive Copper Working” (Amer. Anthrop. vol. vii. pp. 93-117), who did not consider the resemblance of these mound-specimens to the art of Mexico proof of extra-North American origin. Holmes (Handb. of Inds. N. of Mex., 1907, pt. i. p. 343) points out that the great mass of the copper of mounds came from the region of Lake Superior, and that had extensive intercourse between Mexico or Central America and the mound-country existed, or colonies from those southern parts been present in the area in question, artifacts of undoubtedly Mexican origin would have been found in the mounds in considerable abundance, and methods of manipulation peculiar to the south would have been much in evidence. The facts indicate at most some exotic influence from Mexico, &c., but nothing far-reaching in its effects.

In the lower Mississippi valley the culture of certain peoples has been thought to contain elements (e.g. the temples and other religious institutions of the Natchez) suggestive of Mexican or Central American origin, either by inheritance from a common ancient source or by later borrowings. When one reaches the Pueblos region, with its present and its extinct “village culture,” there is considerable evidence of contact and inter-influence, if not perhaps of common origin, of culture-factors. Dr J. Walter Fewkes, a chief authority on the ethnic history of Arizona, New Mexico and the outlying areas of “Pueblos culture,” especially in its ceremonial aspects, has expressed the opinion (Amer. Anthrop. vol. vii. p. 51) that “it is not improbable that both Mexican and Pueblos cultures originated in a region in northern Mexico, developing as environment permitted in its northern and southern homes.” Unfavourable milieu in the north prevented the culture of the Pueblos Indians and the Cliff-dwellers, their ancestors, reaching the height attained in Mexico and Central America, represented by temple-architecture, ornamentation of buildings, hieroglyphs, &c. Strong evidence of Pueblos-Mexican relationship Dr Fewkes sees (Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., 1900) in the great serpent cult of Tusayan, the “New Fire” and other Pueblos ceremonials of importance; also in the mosaic objects (gorgets, ear-pendants, breast-ornaments, &c.) from Pueblos ruins in Arizona, some of the workmanship of which equals that of similar character in old Mexico. The arid region of the south-western United States and part of northern Mexico may well have been a centre for the dispersion of such primitive institutions and ideas as reached their acme in the country of the Aztecs. But of the Pueblos languages, the Moqui or Hopi of north-eastern Arizona is the only one showing undoubted, though not intimate, relationship with the Nahuatl of ancient Mexico. The Shoshonian family, represented in the United States by the Shoshonees, Utes, Comanches

and other tribes, besides the Moqui, includes also the numerous Sonoran tribes of north-western Mexico, as well as the Nahuatl-speaking peoples farther south, some of the outliers having wandered even to Costa Rica (and perhaps to Panama). This linguistic unity of the civilized Aztecs with the rude Utes and Shoshones of the north is one of the most interesting ethnological facts in primitive America. Change of environment may have had much to do with this higher development in the south. Besides the Shoshonian, the Coahuiltecan and the Athabaskan are or have been represented in northern Mexico, the last by the Apaches and Tobosos. From the period of the Spanish colonization of New Mexico down to about the last quarter of the 19th century (and sporadically later, e.g. the attack in 1900 on the Mormon settlement in Chihuahua), these Indians have hovered around the Mexican border, &c., their predatory expeditions extending at one time as far south as Jalisco. In the far west the Yuman family of languages belongs on both sides of the border.

In the popular mind the religion of the North American Indian consists practically of belief in the “Great Spirit” and the “Happy Hunting Grounds.” But while some tribes, e.g. of the Iroquoian and Caddoan stocks appear to have come reasonably near a pantheistic

conception tending toward monism and monotheism, not a little of present Indian beliefs as to the “Great Spirit,” “God” and “Devil,” “Good Spirit” and “Evil Spirit,” &c., as well as concerning moral distinctions in the hereafter, can reasonably be considered the result of missionary and other influences coming directly or indirectly from the whites. The central idea in the religion and mythology of the aborigines north of Mexico is what Hewitt (Amer. Anthrop., 1902) has proposed to term orenda, from “the Iroquois name of the fictive force, principle or magic power which was assumed by the inchoate reasoning of primitive man to be inherent in every body and being of nature and in every personified attribute, property or activity belonging to each of these and conceived to be the active cause or force or dynamic energy involved in every operation or phenomenon of nature, in any manner affecting or controlling the welfare of man.” The orendas of the innumerable beings and objects, real and imagined, in the universe differed immensely in action, function, power, &c., and in like manner varied were the efforts of man by prayers, offerings and sacrifices, ceremonies and rites of a propitiatory or sympathetic nature to influence for his own welfare the possessor of this or that orenda, from the “high gods” to the least of all beings. Corresponding to the Iroquoian orenda is the wakanda of the Siouan tribes, some aspects of which have been admirably treated by Miss Fletcher in her “Notes on Certain Beliefs concerning Will Power among the Siouan Tribes” (Science, vol. v., n.s., 1897). Other parallels of orenda are Algonkian manito, Shoshonian pokunt, Athabaskan cæn. As Hewitt points out, these Indian terms are not to be simply translated into English by such expressions as “mystery,” “magic,” “immortal,” “sorcery,” “wonderful,” &c. Man, indeed, “may sometimes possess weapons whose orenda is superior to that possessed by some of the primal beings of his cosmology.”

The main topics of the mythology of the American Indians north of Mexico have been treated by Powell in his “Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians” (First Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1879–1880), and Brinton in his American Hero Myths (1876), Myths of the New World (1896) and Religions of Primitive Peoples (1900). Widespread is the idea of a culture-hero or demi-god (sometimes one of twins or even quadruplets) who is born of a human virgin, often by divine secret fecundation, and, growing up, frees the earth from monsters and evil beings, or re-fashions it in various ways, improves the breed and perfects the institutions of mankind, then retires to watch over the world from some remote resting-place, or, angered at the wickedness of men and women, leaves them, promising to return at some future time. He often figures in the great deluge legend as the friend, helper and regenerator of the human race. A typical example of these culture-heroes is the Algonkian character who appears as Nanabozho among the Ojibwa, Wisaketchak among the Cree, Napiw among the Blackfeet, Wisaka among the Sacs and Foxes, Glooscap (Kuloskap) among the Micmac,