Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/156

136 monstrous, — of the essence of quackery, without the conscious intent of it; they may even have been as our devout fathers viewed them, — really diabolical: but they were rudely earnest, intensely practical, and substantially sincere. “Indian ceremonies,” says Major Campion, an in- telligent observer of them, “are not funny, they are not ridiculous; they are wild, fierce, and earnest, ofttimes cruel and blood-thirsty. They are semi-religious rites, — not celebrated in a perfunctory way, by a salaried pagan priesthood; but are the solemn, earnest exercises of grim, determined savages.”

It is hardly probable that any one in converse with what is left of the Indian race and tribes would now say that they were without religion, or that such religion as they have was of harmful rather than of good influence over them. Their religion is the product of all the elements, conditions, and surroundings of their life. It has its fierce and hideous, and also its gentle and winning, influences over them. We are learning lessons from the contact and comparisons of various religions and of those who profess them, in the spirit of contention or harmony, in real or in sham discipleship; and, of these lessons recently learned by us, the Indian has the benefit in tolerance and in charity. In the closest friendships and intimacies of social and domestic life, under the highest civilization and refinement, we are made to realize that religion furnishes the material for division, alienation, and obstruction of sympathies; simply because not only its deepest processes, but also its infinite richness of materials for speculation, preference, and fond and clinging vision and trust, are strictly the secrets of each individual breast. The lonely Indian — roaming the woods, occupied with his dreams and fancies, wondering over the panorama of earth and heaven, and facing his lot in life and death — had his “spiritual exercises.” He could not impart them, neither could they lightly be trifled with. We have learned that the best