urprise
to my brothers that they should refer to it all the more important
events of their lives, and that it should impart its influence even to
the minuter circumstances of their daily intercourse both with
strangers and with each other. From their belief of their relationship
to the Good Spirit, they were a good people. Hence they were,
according to their crude notions of religion, strictly a religious
people; and, although they worshipped the supposed founder of their
race, rather with the qualified adoration that one pays to a good
father watching over, and guiding from his dwelling among the stars,
the destinies of his earthly children; and, although they were
insensible to the deep and humble devotion, and piety, which belong to
the worshippers of the same Being in the land of the pale-faces; yet
was their superstition free from much of the grossness in which the
idolatry of the people of the wilderness is usually buried. Their
idols and images were indeed numerous and of rude workmanship, but,
like the images before whom kneel no small portion of the people of
the land which was mine, they were professed to be worshipped only as
the visible representations of invisible spirits. Human sacrifices
were not known among them--for they rightly held that the Great Spirit
was a kind and affectionate _Father_, and could not delight in the
shedding of the blood of his children, or seeing them sacrificed on
his peaceful altars. They had numerous fasts and feasts, but they were
accompanied by no cruel rites. Those who presided over the religious
ceremonies and observances of this simple people, united, as is usual
among most, if not all unenlightened nations, the character and office
of priest and prophet--of expounders of visions and dreams--and had
the ordering of fasts in the acceptable manner, and at the proper
time. They were few in number, and universally revered, beloved, and
feared. Their influence and authority were felt in every cabin in the
nation. No restraint being imposed upon them, as it is upon the
priests in the City of the Rock, they had no inclination to impose any
unnatural restraint upon others. Assailed by no external temptations
to indulgence themselves, their prohibitions were limited to the very
few gratifications that are inconsistent with the habits of Indian
life. Avarice was a passion of which neither they nor their tribe had,
as yet, felt the influence. All things were in common; and individual