objects which can be
seen and handled. Abstractions are only reached by the introduction of
some term which restores the idea. The Deity is a mystery, of whose
power they must chiefly judge by the phenomena before them. Everything
is mysterious which is not understood; and, unluckily, they understand
little or nothing. If any phenomenon, or existence not before them, is
to be described, the language must be symbolic. The result is, that the
Indian languages are peculiarly the languages of symbols, metaphors,
and figures. Without this feature, everything not in the departments of
eating, drinking, and living, and the ordinary transactions of the
chase and forest, would not be capable of description.

When the Great Sacred White Hare of Heaven, the Manabozho of the
Algrics, and Hiawatha of the Iroquois, kills the Great Misshikinabik,
or prince of serpents, it is understood that he destroys the great
power of evil. It is a deity whom he destroys, a sort of Typhon or
Ahriman in the system. It is immediately found, on going to his lodge,
that it is a man, a hero, a chief, who is sick, and he must be cured by
simples and magic songs like the rest of the Indians. He is surrounded
with Indian doctors, who sing magic songs. He has all the powers of a
deity, and, when he dies, the land is subjected to a flood; from which
Hiawatha alone escapes. This play between the zoonic and mortal shapes
of heroes must constantly be observed, in high as well as in ordinary
characters. To have the name of an animal, or bird, or reptile, is to
have his powers. When Pena runs, on a wager of life, with the Great
Sorcerer, he changes himself sometimes into a partridge, and sometimes
into a wolf, to outrun him.

The Indian's necessities of language at all times require
personifications and linguistic creations. He cannot talk on abstract
topics without them. Myths and spiritual agencies are constantly
required. The ordinary domestic life of the Indian is described in
plain words and phrases, but whatever is mysterious or abstract must be
brought under mythological figures and influences. Birds and quadrupeds
must be made to talk. Weeng is the spirit of somnolency in the lodge
stories. He is provided with a class of little invisible emissaries,
who ascend the forehead, armed with tiny war-clubs, with which they
strike the temples, producing sleep. Pauguk is the personification of
death. He is armed with a bow and arrows, to execute his mortal
func