Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/72

20 myths are told; he is aloof from the world of sense; and he is perhaps best named, as some translators prefer, the Great Mystery of all things.

Yet the Great Spirit is not without proper names. Père Le Jeune wrote thus in 1633, concerning the Montagnais: "They say that there is a certain one whom they call Atahocan, who made all things. Talking one day of God, in a cabin, they asked me what this God was. I told them that it was he who could do everything, and who had made the Sky and Earth. They began to say to one another, 'Atahocan, Atahocan, it is Atahocan.' " Winslow, writing in 1622, mentions a similar spirit, Kiehtan, recognized by the Massachusetts Indians; and the early writers on the Virginia Indians tell of their belief "that there is one chiefe God that hath beene from all eternitie" who made the world and set the sun and moon and stars to be his ministers. The Iroquoian tribes have no precise equivalent for the Algonquian Kitshi Manito, but they believed in a similar spirit, known by the name of Areskoui or Agreskoui, to whom they offered the first-fruits of the chase and of victorious war. The terrible letter in which Pere Isaac Jogues recounts his stay among the Iroquois, as a prisoner, tells of the sacrifice of a woman captive to this deity: "And as often as they applied the fire to that unhappy one with torches and burning brands, an old man cried in a loud voice: 'Aireskoi, we sacrifice to thee this victim that thou mayst satisfy thyself with her flesh, and give us victory over our enemies.' "

The usual rite to the Great Spirit, however, is not of this horrible kind. From coast to coast the sacred Calumet is the Indian's altar, and its smoke is the proper offering to Heaven. "The Sceptres of our Kings are not so much respected," wrote Marquette, "for the Savages have such a Deference for this Pipe, that one may call it the God of Peace and War, and the Arbiter of Life and Death." "It was really a touching spectacle to see the calumet, the Indian emblem