Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/44



The differences observable in the various tribes and races of mankind are not, as many suppose, radical variations. that is, something of a different kind, but merely degrees of the same kind. The negro in his native state, hugging his fetish as a preventive of disease or other misfortune, the idolators bowing down to blocks of wood or stone to appease the wrath of their gods. as they read it in the earthquake, tornado, pestilence or famine, seem to strike us at first as indicative of another kind of creature, but upon more mature reflection we see in all such a different, though a ruder manifestation of the same human faculties, veneration and fear as modified by intelligence, or rather by ignorance.

Perhaps the educated Christian wearing his crucifix suspended by a golden necklace would protest against being linked with the savage, whose desire for immunity from disease or other calamity causes him to wear a charm: and as respects the beautiful work of art worn by the former and the bag of stink worn by the latter, I would think the protest well taken, but the actuating and basic sentiment finding expression in one by enlightened and in the other by barbaric means is evidently the same quality of human nature. The Indians of the west Coast were given to amulets or charms, and generally kept them secreted. They believed, too, in a multiplicity of spirits distributed among the objects of nature, such as the spirits of the mountain. the stream, and smaller things. That is, the mountain had a "ta-man-a-was;" that was the name given by many. They also believed in a Great Spirit, but whether that idea was obtained from the missionaries, I cannot tell. When I arrived in Oregon in 1851, the Indians every-