THE GREAT MYSTERY A MODERN DEITY.
Matthews states of the Hidatsa:
Many claim that the Great Spirit, or, more properly, the Great Mystery, is a deity of the modern Indian only. I have certainly heard some old and very conservative Minnetarees speak of Mahopa as if they meant thereby an influence or power above all other things, but not attaching to it any ideas of personality. It would now be perhaps impossible to make a just analysis of their original conceptions in this matter.[218]