Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/392

 60 Journal of American Folk-Lore.

Religion. In the " Monist " for April, 1899 (vol. ix. pp. 381-415), Dr. Paul Cams has an illustrated article on " Yahveh and Manitou," in which are discussed the resemblances between the Jahveh of the ancient Israelites and the " Great Spirit " of the Indians. Mr. Mooney's account of the " Ghost Dance Religion," in the Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for 1892-93, is drawn upon for many inter- esting details.

Technology. Under the title " Amerindian Arrow Feathering," Prof. O. T. Mason writes in the " American Anthropologist " (vol. i. N. S. pp. 583-585) for July, of the various methods of arrow-feather- ing in use among the aborigines of America.

Tobacco. To the "Rep. U. S. Nat. Mus." for 1897 (Washing- ton, 1899), Mr. Joseph D. McGuire contributes (pp. 351-645) an extended and profusely illustrated account of the " Pipes and Smok- ing Customs of the American Aborigines, based on Material in the U. S. National Museum." This essay is of value to the student of folk-lore, on account of the numerous items of folk-lore and folk- custom which it contains passim. According to Mr. McGuire, in Europe, Asia, and America, " up to a period probably as recent as the first half of the seventeenth century, the employment of smoke appears to have been chiefly, if not entirely, due to its supposed medicinal properties, added to which the Indians used it in their functions of every kind, attaching at times mysterious properties to the plants from which the smoke was produced " (p. 623). Its supposed power to allay hunger or fatigue added to these alleged medicinal properties led the Spanish, French, and English in turn to acquire the habit of drinking or smoking tobacco. Smoking " as a pastime," Mr. McGuire thinks, is a creation of the white race, the successor of the panacea-idea. Smoking tobacco in pre-Columbian times in America seems to have been less widespread than commonly supposed, for the leaves of many other plants were employed, then as now, for the same purpose. It is only through commerce and trade with the Russians, French, and English that the use of tobacco has come to prevail among certain North American Indian tribes at all.

A. F. C. and I. C. C.

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