eir
religion consisted mainly in a devout belief in witchcraft. No
well-defined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine
men" were mere conjurers, though possessed of considerable influence.

[Footnote 52: See Humboldt, _Ansichten der Natur_, 3d ed.,
Stuttgart, 1849, vol. i. p. 203.]

[Footnote 53: "Women and children joined in these fiendish
atrocities, and when at length the victim yielded up his life,
his heart, if he were brave, was ripped from his body, cut in
pieces, broiled, and given to the young men, under the belief
that it would increase their courage; they drank his blood,
thinking it would make them more wary; and finally his body was
divided limb from limb, roasted or thrown into the seething
pot, and hands and feet, arms and legs, head and trunk, were
all stewed into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs,
and dances." Jeffries Wyman, in _Seventh Report of Peabody
Museum_, p. 37. For details of the most appalling character,
see Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, pp. 176-182; Stone's
_Life of Joseph Brant_, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge's _Plains of
the Great West_, p. 418, and _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 525-529;
Parkman's _Jesuits in North America_, pp. 387-391; and many
other places in Parkman's writings.]

[Footnote 54: One often hears it said that the cruelty of the
Indians was not greater than that of mediaeval Europeans, as
exemplified in judicial torture and in the horrors of the
Inquisition. But in such a judgment there is lack of due
discrimination. In the practice of torture by civil and
ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a
definite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or
perverted, gave it a very different character from torture
wantonly inflicted for amusement. The atrocities formerly
attendant upon the sack of towns, as e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg,
etc., might more properly be regarded as an illustration of the
survival of a spirit fit only for the lowest barbarism: and the
Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often exhibited
cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See below, vol.
ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be he