Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/158

138 might visit upon them his wrath forever. The doctrine, if apprehended at all, was dulled in its impression by the amazement which paralyzed their ability really to grasp it. It might have been grimly submitted to as relieved by the suggestion — giving the comfort of companionship to misery — that they would share the terrible doom in the fellowship of their own race. And there were many reasons and occasions which strongly disposed the red man to long for a wide distance and a complete severance of associations from the white man, as well for the unknown hereafter as here on earth. If in the vigorous intellectual stretch of the reasoning powers of some of the more gifted of the savages the hideous doctrine was really brought within the grasp of the understanding, the ability to ponder it would be likely to be accompanied by some keen speculation as to its reasonableness, truthfulness, and authority.

There were shrewd and ingenious individuals among those whom the missionaries sought to convert, as the latter have left on record, who very naïvely took refuge from this and from other unattractive or perplexing instructions by insisting that all these lessons and warnings might be very true and good as parts of the white men's religion, who, if they had not a God of their own, had some very peculiar means of knowing things kept secret from the Indian. This ingenious refuge in recognizing and arguing, — as among the many fundamental differences between the white men and the red men, in their knowledge, privileges, opportunities, and consequent duties, — that there might well be a very broad distinction between the religions suited to their respective conditions, very often presents itself in related conversations of some of the more acute savages with the missionaries. That the savages had a religion of their own — what we call the religion of Nature — would find assurance in the single fact of their irresponsiveness and indocility under any merely dogmatical or doctrinal teachings, apart from