Among this rude people, who were at one time supposed to have been without any religion, habitual piety may be considered the most remarkable characteristic: every action of their lives is connected with some acknowledgment of a Superior Power. Many have imagined that the severe fasts sometimes endured by the Indians were only for the purpose of accustoming themselves to support hunger; but all the circumstances connected with these voluntary privations leave no doubt that they were solemn religious exercises. Dreams and visions during these fasts were looked upon as oracular, and respected as the revelations of Heaven. The Indian frequently propitiates the favor of the inferior spirits by vows; when for some time unsuccessful in the chase, or suffering from want in long journeys, he promises the genius of the spot to bestow upon one of his chiefs, in its honor, a portion of the first fruits of his success;[256] if the chief be too distant to receive the gift, it is burned in sacrifice.
The belief of the Indian in a future state, although deeply cherished and sincere, can scarcely be regarded as a defined idea of the immortality of the soul.[257] There is little spiritual or exalted in his conception. When he attempts to form a distinct notion of the spirit, he is blinded by his senses; he calls it the shadow or image of his body, but its acts and enjoyments are all the same as those of its earthly existence. He only pictures to himself a continuation of present pleasures. His Heaven is a delightful country, far away beyond the unknown Western seas, where the skies are ever bright and serene, the air genial, the spring eternal, and the forests abounding in game; no war, disease, or torture are known in that happy land; the sufferings of life are endured no more, and its sweetest pleasures are perpetuated and increased; his wife is tender and obedient, his children dutiful and affectionate. In this country of eternal happiness, the Indian hopes to be again received into the favor of the Great Spirit, and to rejoice in his glorious presence.[258] But in his simple mind there is a deep and enduring conviction that admission to this delightful country of souls can only be attained by good and noble actions in this mortal life. For the bad men there is a fate terribly different—endless afflictions, want, and misery; a land of hideous desolation; barren, parched, and dreary hunting-grounds, the abode of evil and malignant spirits, whose office is to torture, whose pleasure is to enhance the misery of the condemned. It is also almost universally believed that the Great Spirit manifests his wrath or his favor to the evil and the good in their journey to the land of souls. After death the Indian believes that he is supplied with a canoe; and if he has been a virtuous warrior, or otherwise worthy, he is guided across the vast deep to a haven of eternal happiness and peace by the hand of the Great Spirit; but if his life be stained with cowardice, vice, or negligence of duty, he is abandoned to the malignity of evil genii, driven about by storms and darkness over that unknown sea, and at length cast ashore on the barren land, where everlasting torments are his portion.[259]
The Indians generally believe in the existence of a Spirit of Evil, and occasionally pray to him in deprecation of his wrath. They do not doubt his inferiority to the Great Spirit, but they believe that he has the power to inflict torments and punishments upon the human race, and that he has a malignant delight in its exercise.
The souls of the lower animals are also held by the Red Man to be immortal: he recognizes a certain portion of understanding in them, and each creature is supposed to possess a guardian spirit peculiar to itself. He only claims a superiority in degree of intelligence and power over the beasts of the field, Man is but the king of animals. In the world of souls are to be found the shades of every thing that breathes the breath of life. However, he takes little pains to arrange or develop these strange ideas. The enlightened heathen philosophers of antiquity were not more successful.
To penetrate the mysteries of the future has always been a favorite object of superstition,[260] and has been attempted by a countless variety of means. The Indian trusts to his dreams for this revelation, and invariably holds them sacred. Before he engages in any important undertaking, particularly in war, diplomacy, or the chase, the dreams of his principal chiefs are carefully watched and examined; by their interpretation his conduct is guided. In this manner the fate of a whole nation has often been decided by the chance visions of a single man. The Indian considers that dreams are the mode by which the Great Spirit condescends to hold converse with man; thence arises his deep veneration for the omens and warnings they may shadow forth.[261]
Many other superstitions, besides those of prognostics from dreams, are cherished among the Indians. Each remarkable natural feature, such as a great cataract, a lake, or a difficult and dangerous pass, possesses a spirit of the spot, whose favor they are fain to propitiate by votive offerings: skins, bones, pieces of metal, and dead dogs are hung up in the neighborhood, and dedicated to its honor. Supposed visions of ghosts are sometimes, but rarely, spoken of: it is, however, generally believed that the souls of the dead continue for some time to hover round the earthly remains: dreading, therefore, that the spirits of those they have tortured watch near them to seek opportunity of vengeance, they beat the air violently with rods, and raise frightful cries to scare the shadowy enemy away.
Among some of the Indian tribes, an old man performed the duty of a priest at their religious festivals; he broke the bread and cast it in the fire, dedicated the different offerings, and officiated in the sacrifice. It was also his calling to declare the omens from dreams and other signs, as the warnings of Heaven. These religious duties of the priest were totally distinct from the office of the juggler, or "medicine-man," although some observers have confounded them together. There were also vestals in many nations of the continent who were supposed to supply by their touch a precious medicinal efficacy to certain roots and simples.
The "medicine-men," or jugglers, undertook the cure of diseases, the interpretation of omens, the exorcising of evil spirits, and magic in all its branches. They were men of great consideration in the tribe, and were called in and regularly paid as physicians; but this position could only be attained by undergoing certain ordeals, which were looked upon as a compact with the spirits of the air. The process of the vapor bath was first endured; severe fasting followed, accompanied by constant shouting, singing, beating a sort of drum, and smoking. After these preliminaries the jugglers were installed by extravagant ceremonies, performed with furious excitement and agitation. They possessed, doubtless, some real knowledge of the healing art; and in external wounds or injuries, the causes of which are obvious, they applied powerful simples, chiefly vegetable, with considerable skill. With decoctions from ginseng, sassafras, hedisaron, and a tall shrub called bellis, they have been known to perform remarkable cures in cases of wounds and ulcers. They scarified the seat of inflammation or rheumatic pain skillfully with sharp-pointed bones, and accomplished the cupping process by the use of gourd shells as substitutes for glasses. For all internal complaints, their favorite specific was the vapor bath, which they formed with much ingenuity from their rude materials. This was doubtless a very efficient remedy, but they attached to it a supernatural influence, and employed it in the ceremonies of solemn preparation for great councils.
All cases of disease, when the cause could not be discovered, were attributed to the influence of malignant spirits. To meet these, the medicine-man, or juggler, invested himself with his mysterious character, and endeavored to exorcise the demon by a great variety of ceremonies, a mixture of delusion and imposture. For this purpose, he arrayed himself in a strange and fanciful dress, and on his first arrival began to sing and dance round the sufferer, invoking the spirits with loud cries. When exhausted with these exertions, he attributed the hidden cause of the malady to the first unusual idea that suggested itself to his mind, and in the confidence of his supposed inspiration, proclaimed the necessary cure. The juggler usually contrived to avoid the responsibility of failure by ordering a remedy impossible of attainment when the patient was not likely to recover. The Iroquois believed that every ailment was a desire of the soul, and, when death followed, it was from the desire not having been accomplished.
Among many of the Indian tribes, the barbarous custom of putting to death those who were thought past recovery, existed, and still exists. Others abandoned these unfortunates to perish of hunger and thirst, or under the jaws of the wild beasts of the forest. Some nations put to death all infants who had lost their mother, or buried them alive in her grave, under the impression that no other woman could rear them, and that they must perish by hunger. But the dreadful custom of deserting the aged and emaciated among the wandering tribes is universal.[262] When these miserable creatures become incapable of walking or riding, and there is no means of carrying them, they themselves uniformly insist upon being abandoned to their fate, saying that they are old and of no further use—they left their fathers in the same manner—they wish to die, and their children must not mourn for them. A small fire and a few pieces of wood, a scanty supply of meat, and perhaps a buffalo skin, are left as the old man's sole resources. When in a few months the wandering tribe may revisit the spot where he was deserted, a skull and a few scattered bones will be all that the wolves and vultures have left as tokens of his dreadful fate.