all other parts of the human body. Hence they say that the souls eat and drink, and they therefore set apart provisions for them after death. I often conversed with them on this subject, asking them where their souls went to after death: 'They go,' said they, 'a far way off, to a great village in the region where the sun sets.

In Hunter's Memoirs, there are also various interesting traditions connected with the Indian belief of a future state. Having gone with some of his Indian companions upon an expedition of curiosity across the Rocky Mountains, they at length unexpectedly reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. "Here," says he, "the surprise and astonishment of our whole party was indescribably great. The unbounded view of waters, the incessant and tremendous dashing of the waves along the shore, accompanied with a noise resembling the roar of loud and distant thunder, filled our minds with the most sublime and awful sensations; and fixed on them, as immutable truths, the tradition we had received from our old men, that the great waters divide the residence of the Great Spirit from the temporary abodes of his red children. We here contemplated in silent dread the immense difficulties over which we should be obliged to triumph after death, before we could arrive at those delightful hunting grounds

* Relation de la Nouvelle France, 1634, p. 58.

which are unalterably destined for such only as do good, and love the Great Spirit. We looked in vain for the stranded and shattered canoes of those who had done wickedly we could see none, and we were led to hope that they were few in number. We offered up our devotions; or, I might rather say, our minds were serious, and our devotions continued all the time we were in this country; for we had ever been taught to believe that the Great Spirit resided on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, and this idea continued throughout the journey, notwithstanding the more specific water boundary assigned by our traditionary dogmas." *

This tradition, of the Indians being admitted after death into a delightful country in the west, corresponds with what is said by Charlevoix :-" After death, the Indians believe, that the souls go into a region which is destined for their eternal dwelling, which they say is situated far in the west; that they take many months to reach it, having numerous difficulties to surmount in their journey, and particularly a great river to pass, where many are cast away." In Hakluyt's account of Jaques Cartier's discovery, in 1535, of the Island of Hochelago on the St. Lawrence, (now the Island of Montreal,) he relates of the Indians in that quarter:-" They

* Hunter's Memoirs, p. 69.

+ Charlevoix, Journal Historique, let. 24.

believe that, when they die, they goe into the stars, and thence by little and little descend down into the horizon, even as the stars doe: and that then they goe into certain greene fields full of goodly, fair, and precious trees, flowers, and fruits." And the early Franciscan missionary Sagard, who resided among the Hurons, says of them:-" They believe in the immortality of the soul, and that when it leaves the body, it goes rejoicing along the road of the stars, (the milky way,) which they call the path of souls." +

The Indians, according to Hunter, have no fixed days set apart for devotional purposes, but offer up their joint prayers upon particular occasions, such as the declaration of war, the restoration of peace, and upon extraordinary natural visitations. They >have also rejoicings which assume a pious form, as the time of harvest, the return of the new moon, &c. "In general, however," says he, "a day seldom passes with an elderly Indian, or others who are esteemed wise and good, in which a blessing is not asked, or thanks returned to the Giver of Life; sometimes audibly, but more generally in the devotional language of the heart." +

Was it therefore to be wondered at that numerous

* Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii. p. 223.

Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, par Frère Sagard, ch. 18. Paris, 1632.

Hunter's Memoirs, ch. 6.

tribes, entertaining such views of religion, and carrying into practice its simple but sincere precepts, as handed down to them from their ancestors, should have been perplexed by the modes in which new religious doctrines were attempted to be taught to them by the Europeans? Little or no inquiry was made as to their existing notions of natural religion, or of the worship of a Deity. However much the early missionaries of the Romish and the Reformed Churches disputed about the right road by which the Indian was to be sent to heaven, they cordially joined in the cry of "infidel salvage," "impious heathen," &c. &c., unanimously pronouncing him-for the present at least-to be under the sole and exclusive dominion of the devil. "These parts," says the Rev. Dr. Mather, "were then covered with nations of barbarous Indians and Infidels, in whom the prince of the power of the air did work as a spirit; nor could it be expected that nations of wretches, whose whole religion was the most explicit sort of devil-worship, should not be acted by the devil to engage in some early and bloody action for the extinction of a plantation so contrary to his interests as that of New England was. ."* Again: " Satan," writes the superiorgeneral of all the Jesuit Canadian missions to the head of his order in France, "Satan has made

* Mather's Magnalia, book vii. ch. 6.

every effort to recover the ground which Jesus Christ had gained from him, and to maintain possession of a country where he had reigned peaceably for so many ages.

By Roman Catholic and Protestant the Indian was called upon, with frightful denunciations, to relinquish the worship of the Great Spirit, as taught him by his forefathers, and to adopt in its place the religion of the Whites. But what did the shrewd Indian perceive in these his new religious instructors, that was calculated to incline him to listen to their exhortations? Their morality he could not respect, and their conduct towards his countrymen had never been such as to merit his confidence and esteem. Besides, what was he to think of the differences and distinctions which appeared to exist among the Europeans themselves on the subject of the religious doctrines which they inculcated? "The different methods," says Hennepin, "that are used for the instruction of the Indians retard much their conversion. One begins by the animal part, another by the spiritual. There are diversity of beliefs among the Christians; every one believes his own faith to be the purest, and his own method the best there ought therefore to be a uniformity in belief and method, as there is but one Truth

*

Relation de la Nouvelle France, 1643-44, par le Père Vimont, ch. 8.