call them, in baskets; and made frequent invocations to them for aid during their stay or their operations. Other conjurers regulated the weather, and some undertook to procure drought, whilst the power of others extended only to rain, it being acknowledged that the same spirit or idol could not procure both. Father Petit, who has given this account during his priority at New Orleans, had previously spent a considerable time amongst the Choc taws. One consideration forces itself upon the mind. If the Indians of this continent had been theists, they would have been almost an exception to those other hordes of whom we have any history, and must have appeared so to those missionaries who would not have failed to notice the difference and to mention the fact: but they, on the contrary, call them idolaters, and place them on a level with the uncivilized tribes of whom the church had in all ages numerous accounts, and who were almost universally polytheists. The history of their manitous and the gradations, and of the opposition of those manitous, and of the opposition supposed to exist between the Indian and the French manitous is plainly exhibited. The worship of the sun and of the idols in the temple of Natchez and in the other temples of that nation, all tend clearly to the conclusion that the aboriginal Indians of what is now the middle range of our states, were polytheists, and as we have reason to believe that their religion was a correct general exhibition of that of their brethren, I think it may be fairly deduced that the religion of North America was polytheism. Such also was that of most nations when, following their own devices, they swerved from the ancient religion of their progenitors, which was the worship of one god, as we have good proof, from history and from other monuments, to establish. Should my more urgent duties permit my devoting some time to the investigation which I have commenced, I shall follow up my inquiries regarding the origin of our aboriginal tribes. But it will afford me more abundant gratification should some more competent person undertake the task. THE RELIGION OF THE ABORIGINAL AMERICANS. Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses. Tomes vi. vii. It must be an object of interest, at least to every American, to become acquainted with the customs and manners of the people who once possessed the soil which he now inhabits. The first European settlers do not, however, appear to have had sufficient leisure, opportunity, or inclination for the research, to enable them to obtain that knowledge, or to leave upon record what they did learn. Engaged in the search after precious metals, the providing for pressing wants, guarding against menacing danger, or repairing the consequences of disaster, they knew little of the language of tribes which they despised for their barbarism, and dreaded for their cruelty, cunning, and deceit they appear to have had little of that philosophical curiosity which leads to investigation for mere speculative purposes, and they felt more interested in learning how to improve their fortune, than in discovering whom the savages' worshipped, and by what ceremonial. The history of the colonies, as well as that of the states, exhibits to us the continued retreat of the red man from the encroachments of the white, and the latter still occupied with his peculiar concerns of the former. This will own projects, regardless of the domestic or probably satisfy the inquirer, who would ask why we possess so few documents and so little information upon the subject of Indian customs. However, the work which we now examine is well calculated, to a certain extent, to supply much of what appears wanting upon this head. This collection of letters is a selection from several which had been received in Europe, during a considerable portion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, stationed in various regions of both hemispheres. The edition now before us consists of twenty-five volumes, four of which, viz.: the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth, contain the documents regarding the American continent and the West Indies. The editor commences his preface to this portion, with a passage which we translate: "The Memoirs of America present to the reader's curiosity objects very different from those of the missions of the Levant. The islands of the Archipelago, Constantinople, Syria, the adjacent_provinces, the kingdom of Persia, and that of Egypt preserve, as yet, traces of their ancient splendour; and in these countries, which we may call degraded, still everything reminds us of the industry, the riches, and the magnificence of their former inhabitants. America, on the contrary, scarcely presents to us anything besides lakes, forests, unreclaimed lands, rivers, and savages. 46 Cupidity, and a sort of restlessness, produced the discovery of this fourth portion of the world. We treat here neither of the voyages nor of the conquests of the first navigators. A sufficient number of other writers have described the hardihood of the enterprises, and the too direful success of the modern argonauts; immense regions discovered. depopulated, devastated; millions of men, free and tranquil in their possessions, immolated as victims to the avarice, even to the caprices of their new guests, might indeed excite our interest, but would create in us a more afflicting sympathy." The writer then vindicates France from such charges, and proceeds to show how she entered upon her lands by purchase, and cultivated peace with the Indians; that the King of France, informed of the superstition, ignorance, and barbarism of his new allies, sent missionaries of the Society of Jesuits to the Iroquois, the Hurons, the Illinois, &c. He proceeds: "Those icy regions have been watered by their sweat and soaked with their blood. Several died in torments, the bare recollection of which causes our nature to shudder, and all suffered incredible pain and fatigue. "Obliged, in some degree, to become savages with those barbarians, thus to bring them to be men, that they might subsequently become Christians, they learned their languages, lived according to their manners, traversed the woods in their society, and became like to them in everything which was not evil, that they might induce them to hear, to love, to esteem, and to practice that which was good." The opportunities for observation which these men possessed, were therefore of the very best description; of the ability to turn these opportunities to account, few will be disposed to raise a question; and for the fidelity of their relation, perhaps as little doubt can exist, as in most cases of good testimony; they may be considered as perfectly disinterested, and the relations were given by persons, who, because of their remote stations, could not have conspired to frame a system of deceit; they were given to affectionate friends and for superiors, to whom they were bound by the most solemn and sacred ties, to be plain and candid. If ever documents possessed internal evidence of truth, that evidence is found in these letters, of which the editor says: "They bear, as do all the other letters of this work, a character of simplicity and of truth, which affects and which persuades. There is observable throughout, great care to hazard nothing, to speak only of what is within the writer's knowledge, only of what he has examined with a scrupulous attention, a taste for observation which extends to everything, a desire to be informed and to communicate knowledge, the result probably of a good education, of a laudable emulation, and of a sensitiveness happy and profound, which, without permitting the missionary to forget what is required by the most pure and ardent zeal, teaches him to discover the secret of uniting with the love of use. ful science the most continued, persevering, and painful duties of his ministry." Having premised these few observations as to the credit of the writers, the first question which presents itself to us is, whether the Aborigines were pure theists, as has been frequently asserted, or whether their religion, like that of the other degraded and barbarous nations known to us, was a blending of polytheism, idolatry, and superstition. Upon this subject, we meet with the following passage, in a letter of Father Gabriel Marest, a Jesuit_missionary in Canada, to his superior Father Lamberville, procurator of the Canada missions. Father Marest was chaplain to two vessels which sailed on the 10th of August, 1696, from Quebec, under the command of M. D'Iberville, to take possession of stations which the British were forming upon the shore of Hudson's Bay. On the 13th of October, the English surrounded a small fort at the confluence of two rivers, which he calls the Bourbon and the St. Therese, the former of which, the English, he says, called the Pornetton, in the latitude of something more than 57 degrees. Upon the arrival of the expedition in September, Father Marest states that he applied with assiduity to perfect himself in the language of the Indians. In September of the following year, the English recaptured the fort, and the writer was taken and sent to Plymouth, in England, where he was confined in prison until exchanged. He states, that, during the year of his residence at the fort and in its vicinity, upwards of three hundred canoes had arrived, for the purposes of traffic, from seven or eight of the neighbouring tribes, the most distant, the most numerous, and the most considerable of which were the Creeks and the Assiniboels, the former of which were sometimes called the Knistinnons: the language of the Creeks he calls the Algonquin, and that of the Assiniboels the same as that of the Scioux. He then describes their places of residence and alliances; after which, he proceeds to describe their religion, regarding which we give the following passage: As to the religion which they profess, I be. lieve that it is the same as that of the other savages: I do not know, as yet, with precision in what their idolatry consists. I do know that they have a sort of sacrifices; they are great jugglers; they use, as the others do, the pipe which they call calumet; they smoke at the sun; they also smoke towards absent persons; they have frequently smoked to our fort and our ves sel: yet I cannot tell you, for certain, what notions of the divinity they might have, not having been able to fathom them. I will only add, that they are extremely superstitious, greatly debauched, that they live in simultaneous polygamy, and in a great estrangement from the Christian religion." cipal occupation was to study their language. It is learned with great difficulty, especially when one has no other teachers but Indians." After a dissertation upon the languages, and giving specimens of the dialects of the Abnakis, the Algonquins, the Hurons, and the Illinois, he states, that after nearly two years residence in this nation, he was or dered to the missions in the country of the Illinois. Previous, however, to his setting off, he was detained three months in Quebec, studying the Algonquin tongue, and on the 13th of August, probably 1692, he set out from Quebec in a canoe, to go through rivers and lakes, over unreclaimed lands, and in the midst of forests, a journey of eight hundred leagues to the nation of the Illinois. After much suffering near the lake of the Hurons, the company having been scattered by bad weather, he had to send some provisions to his comrades from Missilimakinak, where two missionaries were stationed, one for the Hurons, the other for the Outaouacks 66 Although this extract gives us very little information respecting the facts which we seek, yet it exhibits to us the candour of the writer, and the difficulty of attaining, in a short time, accurate notions of a reli-probably Ottowas. Of those he gives the following account:gion to which we are perfect strangers: whilst it is a striking contrast to the pre-tached to the juggling of their charlatans. They "They are very superstitious and much atsumption of persons, who, with less oppor- claim an origin equally absurd and ridiculous! tunity, have in similar cases dogmatically They pretend to have come from three families, pronounced upon what they did not under- and each family composed of five hundred per stand. sons. Some are of the family of Michabou, or the Great Hare." They pretend that this he spread nets in the water to the depth of Great Hare was a man of prodigious size, that eighteen arms length, and that his hand was scarcely sunk to the armpit; that one day during the deluge, he sent the castor to discover land; but this animal not having returned, he sent another, which brought back a small quantity of earth covered with froth; that he went to that part of the lake whence the earth was brought, and which formed a small island; that he walked in the water around it, and that this island became extraordinarily large, on which account they attributed to him the creation of the earth: they add, that after having effected this, he fled to the sun, which is the usual place of his residence; but before leaving this earth, he directed that upon the death of any one of his descendants, their bodies should be burned, and the ashes cast into the air, that they might more easily ascend to the heavens; that if this was neglected, snow would descend to rest upon locked up with ice, and not being able to protheir lands, their rivers and lakes would remain cure fish, which is their usual diet, they would die in the spring." The fifth letter, in the sixth volume, is one from Father Sebastian Rasles, a Jesuit, to his brother, who lived in France, and is dated at Narantsouac, on the 12th of October, 1723. It was written, at the request of his brother, to give him some notion of the state of the country and its inhabitants. He recites the history of his departure from France, and his travels and residence in America, in such a manner as to exhibit to us his full competency as a witness: "On the 23d of July, in the year 1689, I embarked at Rochelle, and after a good voyage of three months, arrived at Quebec on the 13th of October; I immediately began to learn the language of the Indians, which is very difficult: for it is not enough to study the terms and their signification, as well as to lay in a stock of words and phrases; it is, besides, necessary to know the turn and arrangement which they receive from the natives, which can be attained only by intercourse and habits of intimacy with them. "I thence went to live in a village in the nation of the Abnakis, which was in a forest, about three leagues from Quebec: this village was inhabited by about two hundred Indians, most of whom were Christians," &c. He next describes their mode of building, dress, and occupations; after which, he con tinues: "It was in the midst of this people, who are considered the least rude of our Indians, that I served my missionary apprenticeship. My prin Believing, as we do, the Mosaic account of the general deluge, and the origin of all the families of the earth from Noah, and seeing amongst so many Asiatic tribes the similar accounts of an extraordinary man, who, according to some statements, was saved in a canoe; according to others, walked over the waters; or which, like this, make his size gigantic, and thus enable him The third are derived from Machovo, or the Bear, but no explanation is given of the mode of their descent. liar to the family of the great Hare; the The custom of burning the dead is pecuothers inter the deceased, and a detailed account is given of the modes in which the chiefs are decorated for interment, and of the funeral chaunt. Our readers are suffi ciently acquainted with those particulars. But the following extract will, probably, exhibit what is not so generally known: to overtop the billows; we look upon them | from them sprung a woman who is their all to be the rude traditions of degenerate mother. nations, who, in their wilds and barbarism, preserve the outline of that history which Shem, Ham, and Japheth related to their children, and the accurate detail of which is recorded in the sacred volume. We also view the departure of the great Hare for the sun, together with the worship which it is evident several of our tribes paid to that luminary, to afford a strong presumption of an intimate alliance between the progenitors of our red brethren and some of the Asiatic nations; this, we think, is also much strengthened by their precept for burning the bodies of the deceased, and esteem for jugglers, as well as their expertness in the practice. How far the tradition of the three original families might be founded upon the fact of the three sons of Noah, we shall not venture to determine; but, we strongly incline to the opinion, that most of the early practices of pagans, and their principal religious traditions are founded upon incorrect and mistaken views of the primitive theism, and the history of the early pa triarchs. Father Rasles gives us an account of the manner in which some circumstances served to confirm the family of Michabou in their notions. "It is but a few years since, that the winter having been longer than usual, there was a general consternation amongst the Indians of the family of the Great Hare. They had recourse to their usual jugglings; they frequently met to devise the means of dissipating the inimical snow which obstinately kept possession of the earth, when an old woman addressed them thus: My children, you have no sense; you know the orders left by the Great Hare to burn the bodies of the dead, and to cast their ashes to the winds, that they might the more speedily return to their country in heaven, and you have disobeyed those orders by leaving, during several days, the body of a man in this vicinity without being burned, as though he did not belong to the family of the Great Hare. Repair your fault without delay; be careful to burn it if you desire to banish the snow. You are right, mother,' said they; you have more sense than we have, and the advice which you give restores us to life.' They immediately detached twenty-five men to burn the body; they were occupied on the journey and return during about fifteen days; meantime the thaw came, and the snow disappeared. They heaped praises and presents upon the old woman who had given this advice; and this event, quite within the range of natural causes, as it was, greatly served to keep them in their foolish and superstitious credulity." The second family of the Ottawas are the descendants of Namepich, or the Carp, the eggs of which being laid on the bank of a river, were impregnated by the sun, and VOL. IV. 30 "Where the superstition of this people appears most extravagant, is in the worship which they pay to what they call their Manitou. As they know only the beasts with which they live rather in their skins, and the plumage of birds, in their forests, they imagine in those brutes, or a sort of genius which governs all things, and is the master of life and death. According to them, there are Manitous common to the whole nation, and special ones for each individual. Oussakita all the animals that walk upon the earth or that or Wassakita is, they say, the great Manitou of fly in the air. It is he who governs them; thus when they go to hunt, they offer to him tobacco, powder, lead, and skins well prepared, which they tie to a long pole, and lifting them in the air, they say, Oussakita, we give thee to smoke, and we offer thee the means of killing animals; vouchsafe to be pleased with these gifts, and do not permit the beasts to escape our path; permit us to kill them in goodly numbers, and of the fattest condition, that our children may have no want of clothing or of food.'"' The Manitou of the waters and of fish, is called Michibichi, probably the same as Mississippi: they offer sacrifice to him when they go out to fish, or make voyages: for this purpose, they throw tobacco, food and kettles into the river, and they beseech the genius to cause the waters to flow slowly, and to save their canoes from rocks, and to grant them abundance of fish. Each individual has also his peculiar Manitou, which is a bear, a castor, a bustard, or such like. In the selection of his Manitou, an Indian regarded his choice (whatever it were) as directed by some superior influence which exhibited to him in his sleep that animal, which it would become him to adopt. He as soon as possible after this imagination, killed one of the description, and kept his skin or plumage in the place of greatest honour in his hut, feasted his friends, respectfully harangued the spoils; and adopted his Manitou. Thenceforth its preservation became a peculiar object of his religious care, and itself an object of his veneration; he was specially careful to take it with him to war and to hunt, that it might be a source of his pretion and safety. Their attachment to the indulgences permitted by their education, was, in general, a serious obstacle to their embra ing Christianity. The missionaries found in their tribes, as amongst civilized men, that human nature was everywhere the sa.ne; that men frequently evaded the search after truth, or disregarded it when discovered, whensoever its profession was likely to require the sacrifice of passion or of convenience upon the altar of duty. Writing of the Illinois, the following is an extract from the letter of Father Rasles. "That which we understand by the word Christianity, is known to the savages only by the name prayer. Thus, when in the course of this letter, I might inform you that any savage nation has embraced prayer, the meaning will be that it either has become Christian, or is disposed to become so. There would be far less trouble in the conversion of the Illinois, if prayer would permit them to retain polygamy: they acknowledge that prayer is good, and they are delighted that their wives and children should be taught, but when they are spoken to for their own concerns upon the subject, one immediately finds how hard it is to fix their natural unsteadiness, and bring them to resolve upon each having but one wife, and to have her for ever." It is not our business nor our disposition to preach, but we may be permitted to remark, that if Father Rasles now lived, he might find that what he witnessed the aboriginal Illinois, was not peculiar to the savage nor to the pagan. among As our object in this review is rather to collect facts than to write a dissertation, and by this collection to add to our store from the gatherings of foreigners, as well as to excite our fellow-citizens to a more laborious and systematic research into the antiquities of our country, we shall prefer putting together a number of passages from the letters, to entering into speculations as to what might have occurred. Indeed, we humbly believe, that what are called philosophical historians, have of late years done much mischief by giving their own conjectures, instead of the record of facts. A passage which is just under our eye, confirms us in this notion, whilst it fully explains our mind. The sixth volume contains a letter from the chaplain of the Abnakis, warriors who formed part of the army which attacked Fort George; and of the surrender of which, and the calamitous scene that followed, Mr. Cooper has given so striking a description in his novel of the "Last of the Mohicans." We must acknowledge that we prefer the chaplain's recital, and suspect that the no velist also has read the narrative which lies before us. The Indian canoes had come to, under cover of a point of land, by doubling which they would have been fully in view of the fort, to the attack of which they were advancing with considerable precaution; here they were to remain for the night; the chaplains of three Indian divisions were in one canoe. Our informant writes: "About eleven o'clock, two barges from the fort made their appearance upon the lake. They sailed with such apparently calm consciousness of safety, that they were approaching to where we lay. One of my neighbours, who watched siderable distance. The news was communicafor the general safety, observed them at a conted to all the savages, and the preparations for receiving them were made with admirable promptness and silence. summoned to provide for my safety by going I was immediately ashore and keeping in the wood. It was not from an exhibition of bravery, unbecoming a man of my state, that I turned a deaf ear to the advice which was so generously offered; but I could not believe it was seriously given, since I thought I had excellent reasons to suspect the truth of the news. Four hundred boats and canoes, which, during two days, had covered the waters of the Lake of the Holy Sacrament, must have formed too considerable an exhibition to escape the attentive and clear eyes of an enemy. Upon this principle, I could scarcely persuade myself that two barges would have the rashness, I will not say to enter into combat with, but to present themselves before such a superior force; I was philosophizing, where I had only to open my eyes." We suspect that there is great injury done to the cause of truth by too much philosophism, and too little viewing of fact; and, therefore, we here shall content ourselves chiefly with gleaning matter, upon which our readers can reason as well as we can. In the pursuit of these barges and their capture, one Indian was killed, and another wounded. The chaplain gives us the following account of the interment of the former: "Scarcely did dawn commence, before a party of the Nipistinguian nation proceeded to the ceremonial obsequies of their brother slain in the action of the preceding night, and deceased in the errors of paganism. These obsequies were celebrated with all the pomp and show of the savages, the body having been decked in all its ornaments, or rather overloaded with all the attire which the most original vanity could bring to bear under circumstances of the most melancholy nature. Collars of porcelain, bracelets of silver, decorations and pendants of the ears and nose, and splendid dresses, all had been most prodigally heaped on; the aid of paint, especially of vermilion, had been so given, that the paleness of death might disappear under the effect of these showy colours, and the counte |