his followers, so full their faith in his claims, that,
undeterred by the threats of the soldiery, they prostrated themselves on
their faces before this last of the children of the sun, as he passed on
to a felon's death.[191-2]

These fancied reminiscences, these unfounded hopes, so vague, so
child-like, let no one dismiss them as the babblings of ignorance.
Contemplated in their broadest meaning as characteristics of the race of
man, they have an interest higher than any history, beyond that of any
poetry. They point to the recognized discrepancy between what man is,
and what he feels he should be, must be; they are the indignant protests
of the race against acquiescence in the world's evil as the world's law;
they are the incoherent utterances of those yearnings for nobler
conditions of existence, which no savagery, no ignorance, nothing but a
false and lying enlightenment can wholly extinguish.

FOOTNOTES:

[162-1] The _meda_ worship is the ordinary religious ritual of the
Algonkins. It consists chiefly in exhibitions of legerdemain, and in
conjuring and exorcising demons. A _jossakeed_ is an inspired prophet who
derives his power directly from the higher spirits, and not as the
_medawin_, by instruction and practice.

[164-1] For these particulars see the _Rel. de la Nouv. France_, 1667, p.
12, 1670, p. 93; Charlevoix, _Journal Historique_, p. 344; Schoolcraft,
_Indian Tribes_, v. pp. 420 sqq., and Alex. Henry, _Travs. in Canada and
the Ind. Territories_, pp. 212 sqq. These are decidedly the best
references of the many that could be furnished. Peter Jones' _History of
the Ojibway Indians_, p. 35, may also be consulted.

[165-1] _Science of Language_, Second Series, p. 518.

[165-2] Dialectic forms in Algonkin for white, are _wabi_, _wape_,
_wompi_, _waubish_, _oppai_; for morning, _wapan_, _wapaneh_, _opah_; for
east, _wapa_, _waubun_, _waubamo_; for dawn, _wapa_, _waubun_; for day,
_wompan_, _oppan_; for light, _oppung_; and many others similar. In the
Abnaki dialect, _wanbighen_, it is white, is the customary idiom to
express the breaking of the day (Vetromile, _The Abnakis and their
History_, p. 27: New York, 1866). The loss in composition of the vowel
sound represented by the English w, and in the French writers by the
figure 8, is supported by frequent analogy.

[167-1] Schoolcraft, _Algic Researches_, i. pp. 135-142.

[167-2] The names of the four brothers, Wabun, Kabun, Kabibonokka, and
Shawano,