“Other teachers pretended that stripes were the most effectual means to purge away sin. They advised their hearers to suffer themselves to be beaten with twelve different sticks from the soles of their feet to their necks, that their sins might pass from them through their throats. They preached a system of morals, very severe for the savages, insisting that the Indians abstain from fornication, adultery, murder, theft, and practise virtuous living as the condition to their attaining after death the place of good spirits, which they call Tschipeghacki, the ‘land of spirits,’ where the life is happy, and deer, bear and all manner of game are abundant and the water is like crystal. There nought was to be heard save singing, dancing and merry making.... The passage thither is the Milky Way.... Whoever reaches that place will find a city of beautiful houses and clean streets. Entering a house he will see no one, but have good things to eat placed before him, a fire made and a bed prepared—all of which is done by spirits invisible to him. Others assert that such an one will see the women coming with baskets on their backs full of strawberries and bilberries, large as apples, and will observe the inhabitants daily appear in fine raiment and live a life of rejoicing.—The bad Indians ... will not reach the place, Tschipeghacki, but must remain some distance away, able to see those within dwelling happily, but not able to enter. They would receive nothing but poisonous wood and poisonous roots to eat, holding them ever near the brink of a bitter death, but not suffering them to die.”
Zeisberger usually specifies when his information is derived from tribes other than the Lenape, from whom most of his data were procured; so it is probable that the following quotation applies to them, although in part somewhat at variance with our other knowledge. He says:[38]
“They believe in the immortality of the soul. Some liken themselves to corn which, when thrown out and buried in the soil, comes up and grows. Some believe their souls to be in the sun, and only their bodies here. Others say that when they die their souls will go to God, and suppose that when they have been some time with God they will be at liberty to return to the world and be born again. Hence many believe ... that they may have been in the world before.
“They believe also in the transmigration of the soul. Wandering spirits and ghosts, they claim, sometimes throw something into a public path and whoever goes over it is bewitched and becomes lame or ill.”
Such was the Lenape belief with regard to the powers that control the world, and such were his notions concerning the souls of men. The main channel of communication between this great supernatural realm and mankind was, to the Lenape as to so many other tribes of Indians, the dream or vision, experienced either while fasting or in natural sleep. This subject will be considered in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV
Visions and Guardian Spirits
The most vital and intimate phase of Lenape religion is the belief in dreams and visions, and in the existence of personal guardian spirits or supernatural helpers—concepts of wide distribution among the North American tribes, but rarely, perhaps, so vivid or well-developed as we find them here. The vision was the point of contact, the channel of communication, in Lenape belief, between the great and marvelous supernatural world and the sphere of everyday human life. In a vision the youth first found his guardian spirit, to whom he would always appeal, as his own special friend in the supernatural hierarchy, for aid and comfort in time of trouble, and for the revelation of coming events. He felt that this being took a close personal interest in his affairs, while the greater gods, including the Great Spirit himself, were so remote and so occupied with controlling more important things that they might not notice or concern themselves with the affairs of one individual man. Therefore the bulk of his prayers and offerings went to his guardian spirit. If a Lenape won great success on a war expedition or a hunting trip, he was sure the spirit had helped him; if unlucky, he believed that for some reason his guardian had become estranged, or had been overpowered by superior and malevolent forces. A man might become a sorcerer or a shaman at the behest of his guardian spirit, given in a dream or vision, or change his mode of life in other ways. Not every Lenape was blessed with such a guardian; yet many were so favored, usually in their boyhood days. To be eligible for supernatural favor, the youth had to be piʹlsŭⁿ, or pure, which means that not only must he be chaste, but that he must have kept strictly all the taboos against eating food prepared by women in their periodic condition, etc. Old Lenape say that, as the children of the tribe are reared nowadays in the same way as the whites, they can no longer be piʹlsŭⁿ, and the Powers will speak to them no more. This is a sad matter, for it means the loss of their principal ancient ceremonies, at which only those blessed with a vision can take active part. The old people feel it keenly that there will be no one left to conduct the rites when the last of their generation has been laid away.