rm, and mind, and displaying, when societies began
to exist, a civilization utterly dissimilar from any before known,
afford subject for earnest thought and anxious inquiry. Those who in the
earlier times of American discovery supplied information on these
points, were generally little qualified for the task. Priests and
missionaries alone had leisure or inclination to pursue the subject;
and their minds were often so preoccupied with their own peculiar
doctrines, that they accommodated to them all that fell under their
observation, and explained it by analogies which had no existence but in
their own zealous imaginations. They seldom attempted to consider what
they saw or heard in relation to the rude notions of the savages
themselves. From a faint or fancied similarity of peculiar Indian
superstitions to certain articles of Christian faith, some missionaries
imagined they had discovered traces of an acquaintance with the divine
mysteries of salvation: they concluded that the savage possessed a
knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity,[247] of the Incarnation, of
the sacrifice of a Saviour, and of sacraments, from their own
interpretation of certain expressions and ceremonies.[248] But little
confidence can be placed in any evidence derived from such sources.

The earlier travelers in the interior of the New World received the
impression that the Indians had no religious belief; they saw neither
priests, temples, idols, nor sacrifices among any of the various and
numerous tribes. A further knowledge of this strange people disproved
the hastily-formed opinion, and showed that their whole life and all
their actions were influenced by a belief in the spiritual world.[249]
It is now known that the American Indians were pre-eminent among savage
nations for the superior purity of their religious faith,[250] and,
indeed, over even the boasted elegance of poetical mythology. From the
reports of all those worthy of credence, who have lived intimately among
these children of the forest, it is certain that they firmly believe in
the power and unity of the Most High God, and in an immortality of
happiness or misery. They worship the Great Spirit, the Giver of life,
and attribute to him the creation of the world, and the government of
all things with infinite love, wisdom, and power. Of the origin of their
religion they are altogether ignorant. In general they believe that,
after the world was created and supplied with animal life b