CARIBOU SWIMMING A RIVER
The Amerindians of North America were religious and superstitious, and had a firm faith in a world of spiritual agencies within or outside the material world around us. Most of them believed in the existence of "fairies",—woodland, earth, mountain, or water spirits—whom they declared they could see from time to time in human semblance. Or such spirit or demi-god might assume for a time or permanently the form of an animal. To all such spirits of earth, air, and water, or to the sacred animals they inhabited, sacrifices would be offered and prayers made. Great importance was attributed to dreams and visions. They accustomed themselves to make long fasts, so that they might become light-headed and see visions, or hear spirit voices in a trance. To prepare their minds for this state they would go four or five days without food, and even abstain from drinking.
Undoubtedly their "medicine men" developed great mesmeric powers, and this force, combined with rather clumsy juggling and ventriloquism, enabled them to perform a semblance of "miracles". The Iroquois offered much opposition to Christianity, thinking it would tame their warriors too quickly and affect their national independence; but by the greater part of the Amerindians the message of the Gospel brought by the French priests was eagerly received, and the converts became many and most sincere. Their reverence for the missionaries and belief in them was increased when they saw how effectually they were able to protect them from too-rapacious white adventurers, fierce soldiers, and unscrupulous traders.
The Miamis of Lake Michigan held the symbol of the cross in great respect. A young Frenchman who was trading with them got into a passion and drew his sword to avenge himself for a theft committed on his goods. The Miama chieftain, to appease him, showed him the cross, which was planted in the ground at the end of his lodge, and said to him: "Behold the tree of the Black Gown; he teaches us to pray and not to lose our temper,"—of course, referring to the missionary in the black gown who had been amongst them. Before the cross was planted here these Miamis kept in their houses one or more bogies, to which they appealed in times of distress or sickness. One of these was the skull of the bison with its horns. Another was the skin of the bear raised on a pole in the middle of the hut and retaining the head, which was usually painted green. The women sometimes died of terror from the stories told them by the men about these idols, and the Jesuits did a great deal of good by getting them abolished in many places.
The Supreme Being of the Eskimos was a goddess rather than a god: a mother of all things who lived under the sea. On the other hand, most of the Amerindian tribes believed in one great God of the Sky—Manito, as He was called by the peoples of Algonkin stock, Nainubushan by the Siou and their kindred. This Being was usually kindly disposed towards man; but they also (in most cases) believed in a bad Manito, who was responsible for most of the harm in the world. But sometimes the Great Manito was capricious, or apparently made many mistakes which he had afterwards to rectify. Thus the Siou tribes of Assiniboia believed that the Supreme Being (whom they called Eth-tom-é) first created mankind and all living things, and then, through some oversight or mistake, caused a great flood to cover the earth's surface. So in a hurry he was obliged to make a very large canoe of twigs and branches, and into this he put a pair of every kind of bird and beast, besides a family of human beings, who were thus saved from drowning, and began the world afresh when the waters subsided. This legend was something like the story of Noah's ark, but seems in some form or another to have existed in the mind of all the North-American peoples before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Much the same story was told by the Ojibwés about the Great Hare-God, Nainiboju.
The Siou and the Ojibwé (and other tribes also) believed that after death the soul lay for a time in a trance, and then found itself floating towards a River which must be crossed. Beyond the River lay the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Elysian fields; but to oppose the weary soul anxious to reach this paradise there ramped on the other side a huge, flaming-red bison bull, if it had been ordained by the Great Spirit that the soul's time was not yet come, this red bison pushed it back, and the soul was obliged to re-enter the body, which then awoke from its trance or swoon and resumed its worldly activities.
Suicide was regarded as the most heinous of crimes. Any man killing himself deliberately, fell into the river of the ghost world and was never heard of again, while women who hanged themselves "were regarded as the most miserable of all wretches in the other world".
Their belief in spirits—even ancestral spirits—taking up an abode in the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones, caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural objects. Some one thing—a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing was the totem of the individual or the clan was held sacred in their eyes, and, if it was an animal, was not killed, or, if killed, not eaten. Many of the northern Indians would refrain from killing the wolf or the glutton, or if they did so, or did it by accident, they would refuse to skin the animal. The elder people amongst the Athapaskan Indians, in Hearne's day, would reprove the young folk for "speaking disrespectfully" of different beasts and birds.
Their ideas of medicine and surgery were much mixed up with a belief in magic and in the mysterious powers of their "medicine men". This person, who might be of either sex, certainly knew a few simple medicines to be made from herbs or decoctions of bark, but for the most part he attempted to cure the sick or injured by blowing lustily on the part affected or, more wisely, by massage. A universal cure, however, for all fevers and mild ailments was sweating. Sweating huts were built in nearly every settlement. They were covered over in a way to exclude air as much as possible. The inside was heated with red-hot stones and glowing embers, on to which from time to time water was poured to fill the place with steam. The Amerindians not only went through these Turkish baths to cure small ailments but also with the idea of clearing the intelligence and as a fitting preliminary to negotiations—for peace, or alliance, or even for courtship. In many tribes if a young "brave" arrived with proposals of marriage for a man's daughter he was invited to enter the sweating house with her father, and discuss the bargain calmly over perspiration and the tobacco pipe.
Tobacco smoking indeed was almost a religious ceremony, as well as a remedy for certain maladies or states of mind. The "pipe of peace" has become proverbial. Nevertheless tobacco was still unknown in the eighteenth century to many of the Pacific-coast and far-north-west tribes, as to the primitive Eskimo. It was not a very old practice in the Canadian Dominion when Europeans first arrived there, though it appeared to be one of the most characteristic actions of these red-skinned savages in the astonished eyes of the first pioneers. They used pipes for smoking, however, long before tobacco came among them, certain berries taking the place of tobacco.