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Show 322 INDIAN DEPKEDATIONS the country from south to north he tore up the land as he went along, leaving it in the present condi-tion, with mountains, hills and deserts and not fer-tile as it was. But that he will sometime come back and level the land and make it as it was before. Then it will be the happy hunting ground. The Indians are superstitious and believe there is some kind of charm about writing and making pictures. They also believe in Satan ( Shin- nob) who is always bent on doing harm, that he delights in seeing people do wrong. They do not serve God, because he is good and will not harm any- thing; but they serve Satan through fear; they want to keep peace with him. Many of them, when they eat, throw the first bite over their left shoulders, and when asked what that is for, they say that is to feed Satan to keep peace with him. They believe that the white people can write to him and he will cause sickness or trouble to come onto others. And should you write the name of an Indian on a slip of paper and tell him that you was going to send it to Lucifer, the Indian would risk his life, if necessary to get possession of it. When trouble comes to them, they think, that if they do something to please him, it will stop the trouble. The writer had some acquaintance with the In-dians in the early sixties, they were hospitable if a person came to their camp hungry, and they ex-pected the same from the whites. If they were trusted with anything, they could as a rule be de-pended upon, and were generally truthful ; they dis-pised a falsifier. There were many small bands of Indians in the country at that time, and we could run onto an Indian camp in many places. In the |
