OCR Text |
Show i9oo] INDIAN RELIGION 249 There is a difficulty in analyzing the beliefs which underlie such outward manifestations, because the religion of the Indian is interwoven with every other phase of his life. It ip impossible, for examplp, to disentangle the religious from the social aspect of totemism, or the religious from the aesthetic in art. The two sets of ideas are in every case inevitably and inextricably associated and the exact delimitation of either is impossible. To the mind of the Indian anything which was strange was " mystery/' and to " mystery" was referred in all the languages, everything incomprehensible. This is the meaning of the word " manitou," of Algonquian origin, now so widely used for corresponding conceptions throughout the tribes of the continent. Primarily an adjective, it has come to be employed as a noun, and spirits are called " manitous" as personifications of this quality. As a matter of course, some of these spirits are more powerful than others, and there are, therefore, grades of manitous, and sometimes one in particular, who will be venerated or feared more than any other. There is not, however, any conception of an all- powerful deity or " great spirit." It was the misapprehension of the character of the manitou by the early missionaries and observers, and their tendency to read their own ideas into the Indian religions, that gave rise to the error. The particular manitou which would hold the first place in any given group was naturally determined |