e, and which, turning on its own resources,
composed the Arabian tales of the genii and the modern literature
of pure fiction, is particularly active, fertile, and tyrannical,
though in a less continuous and systematic form, in the barbarian
mind. Acting by wild fits and starts, there is no end to the
extravagant conjectures and visions it bodies forth. Destitute of
philosophical definitions, totally unacquainted with critical
distinctions or analytic reflection, absurd notions, sober
convictions, dim dreams, and sharp perceptions run confusedly
together in the minds of savages. There is to them no clear and
permanent demarcation between rational thoughts and crazy fancies.
Now, no phenomenon can strike more deeply or work more powerfully
in human nature, stirring up the exploring activities of intellect
and imagination, than the event of death, with its bereaving
stroke and prophetic appeal. Accordingly, we should expect to find
among uncultivated nations, as we actually do, a vast medley of
fragmentary thoughts and pictures plausible, strange, lovely, or
terrible relating to the place and fate of the disembodied soul.
These conceptions would naturally take their shaping and coloring,
in some degree, from thescenery, circumstances, and experience
amidst which they were conceived and born. Sometimes these
figments were consciously entertained as wilful inventions,
distinctly contemplated as poetry. Sometimes they were
superstitiously credited in all their grossness with full assent
of soul. Sometimes all coexisted in vague bewilderment. These
lines of separation unquestionably existed: the difficulty is to
know where, in given instances, to draw them. A few examples will
serve at once to illustrate the

35 Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. Squier's Aboriginal
Monuments, appendix, pp. 127-131.

operation of the principle now laid down, and to present still
further specimens of the barbarian notions of a future life.

Some Indian tribes made offerings to the spirits of their departed
heroes by casting the boughs of various trees around the ash,
saying that the branches of this tree were eloquent with the
ghosts of their warrior sires, who came at evening in the chariot
of cloud to fire the young to deeds of war.36 There is an Indian
legend of a witch who wore a mantle composed of the scalps of
murdered women. Taking this off, she shook it, and all the scalps
uttered shrieks of laughter. Another describes a magici