ire was walled by the darkness of
midnight, and in the midst of the temple stood the wise old man,
telling, in simple savage language, the story of _Ta-wats_, when he
conquered the sun and established the seasons and the days. In that
pre-Columbian time, before the advent of white men, all the Indian
tribes of North America gathered on winter nights by the shores of the
seas where the tides beat in solemn rhythm, by the shores of the great
lakes where the waves dashed against frozen beaches, and by the banks of
the rivers flowing ever in solemn mystery--each in its own temple of
illumined space--and listened to the story of its own supreme gods, the
ancients of time.

Religion, in this stage of theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing,
fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has
its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced,
and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No
enterprise is undertaken without consulting the gods, and no evil
impends but they seek to propitiate the gods. All daily life, to the
minutest particular, is religious. This stage of religion is
characterized by fetichism. Every Indian is provided with his charm or
fetich, revealed to him in some awful hour of ecstasy produced by
fasting, or feasting, or drunkenness, and that fetich he carries with
him to bring good luck, in love or in combat, in the hunt or on the
journey. He carries a fetich suspended to his neck, he ties a fetich to
his bow, he buries a fetich under his tent, he places a fetich under his
pillow of wild-cat skins, he prays to his fetich, he praises it, or
chides it; if successful, his fetich receives glory; if he fail, his
fetich is disgraced. These fetiches may be fragments of bone or shell,
the tips of the tails of animals, the claws of birds or beasts, perhaps
dried hearts of little warblers, shards of beetles, leaves powdered and
held in bags, or crystals from the rocks--anything curious may become a
fetich. Fetichism, then, is a religious means, not a philosophic or
mythologic state. Such are the supreme gods of the savage, and such the
institutions which belong to their theism. But they have many other
inferior gods. Mountains, hills, valleys, and great rocks have their own
special deities--invisible spirits--and lakes, rivers, and springs are
the homes of spirits. But all these have animal forms when in proper
_personae_. Yet some of the medicine-spirits can