e legends connected with
them. He affirms positively that

"the most striking thing in all savage belief is the low
estimate put upon man, when unaided by divine, uncreated
power. In Indian belief every object in the universe is
divine except man!"

As to their having no priests, no forms of worship, no philosophical
conceptions, no historical traditions, no proverbs, any one interested
in the Indian of to-day knows that these things are untrue. Whence came
all the myths and legends that recent writers have gathered, a score of
which I myself hold still unpublished in my notebook? Were they all
imagined after the arrival of the Mission Fathers? By no means! They
have been handed down for countless centuries, and they come to us,
perhaps a little corrupted, but still just as accurate as do the
songs of Homer.

Every tribe had its medicine men, who were developed by a most rigorous
series of tests; such as would dismay many a white man. As to their
philosophical conceptions and traditions, Curtin well says that in them

"we have a monument of thought which is absolutely
unequalled, altogether unique in human experience. The
special value of this thought lies, moreover, in the fact
that it is primitive; that it is the thought of ages long
anterior to those which we find recorded in the eastern
hemisphere, either in sacred books, in histories, or in
literature, whether preserved on baked brick, burnt
cylinders, or papyrus."

And if we go to the Pueblo Indians, the Navahos, the Pimas, and others,
all of whom were brought more or less under the influence of the
Franciscans, we find a mass of beliefs, deities, traditions,
conceptions, and proverbs, which would overpower Mr. Hittell merely
to collate.

Therefore, let it be distinctly understood that the Indian was not the
thoughtless, unimaginative, irreligious, brutal savage which he is too
often represented to be. He thought, and thought well, but still
originally. He was religious, profoundly and powerfully so, but in his
own way; he was a philosopher, but not according to Hittell; he was a
worshipper, but not after the method of Serra, Palou, and their priestly
coadjutors.

CHAPTER VII

THE INDIANS UNDER THE PADRES

The first consideration of the padres in dealing with the Indians was
the salvation of their souls. Of this no honest and honorable man can
hold any question. Serra and his coadjutors