Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/65

Rh said of the most infidel Nations, that nature in the midst of perils makes them speak with a Christian voice,—Exclamant vocem naturaliter Christianam,—and have recourse to a God whom they invoke almost without knowing him,—Ignoto Deo."

Exclamant vocem naturaliter Christianam! Two centuries later another Jesuit, Father De Smet, uses the same expression in describing the religious feeling of the Kansa tribe: "When we showed them an Ecce Homo and a statue of our Lady of the Seven Dolours, and the interpreter explained to them that that head crowned with thorns, and that countenance defiled with insults, were the true and real image of a God who had died for love of us, and that the heart they saw pierced with seven swords was the heart of his mother, we beheld an affecting illustration of the beautiful thought of Tertullian, that the soul of man is naturally Christian!"

It is not strange, therefore, that when these same Fathers found in America myths of a creation and a deluge, of a fall from heaven and of a sinful choice bringing death into the world, they conceived that in the new-found Americans they had discovered the lost tribes of Israel.

"The definition of being is simply power," says a speaker in Plato's Sophist; and this is a statement to which every American Indian would accede. Each being in nature, the Indians believe, has an indwelling power by means of which this being maintains its particular character and in its own way affects other beings. Such powers may be little or great, weak or mighty; and of course it behooves a man to know which ones are great and mighty. Outward appearances are no sure sign of the strength of an indwelling potency; often a small animal or a lethargic stone may be the seat of a mighty power; but usually some peculiarity will indicate to the thoughtful