Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/77

Rh its surroundings beyond that to be inferred from the ordinances concerning pollution, which, however, are significant.

—There should, always be a cross-reference in thought between what in time became a religious practice and the earlier sociology, to be mentioned in its place, with which it was closely connected.

Josephus remarks about the Israelites that "beginning immediately from the earliest infancy, nothing was left of the very smallest consequence to be done at the pleasure and disposal of the person himself."

The same is true regarding the Indians. Their religious life is as intense and all-pervading as that of the Israelites. It is yet noticed in full effect among tribes as widely separated, both by space and language, as the Zuñi and the Ojibwa, and their practices are astonishingly similar in essence and even in many details to some of those still prevailing in civilization.

Among the Hurons and Iroquois there were religious rites for all occasions, among others for the birth of a child, for the first cutting of its hair, for its naming, and for its puberty, for the admission of a young man into the order of warriors, and the promotion from warrior to chieftain, for making a mystery-man, for first using a new canoe, for breaking tillage-ground, for sowing and harvest, for fixing the time to fish, for deciding upon a warlike expedition, for marriages, for the torturing of captives, for the cure of disease, for consulting magicians, invoking the daimons, and lamenting the dead.

Shamans.—Among the Indians there was frequently an established and recognized priesthood, provided by initiation into secret religious societies, corresponding in general authority to that of the Levites, although the order of the latter was instituted in a different manner, perhaps imitated from the exclusive class of the priesthood in Egypt. The shamans in all tribes derived a large part of their support from fixed contributions or fees.

Adair describes a special ceremony for the admission or consecration of a priest among the southern tribes, as follows: "At the time of making the holy fire for the yearly atonement of sin the Sagan clothes himself with a white ephod, which is a waistcoat without sleeves, and. sits down on a white buckskin, on a white seat, and puts on it some white beads, and wears a new pair of white buckskin moccasins, made by himself, and never wears these moccasins at any other time."

Similar exclusive use by the high priest of the garments used on the day of the atonement is mentioned in Leviticus.

In addition to the organized class referred to, there were other professional dealers in the supernatural who may be called conjurers, sorcerers, or prophets. They were independent of and often