imperfectly shadowed forth in Manabozho. The Jesuit missionaries seized
this advantage. "If each sort of animal has its king," they urged, "so,
too, have men; and as man is above all the animals, so is the spirit that
rules over men the master of all the other spirits." The Indian mind
readily accepted the idea, and tribes in no sense Christian quickly rose
to the belief in one controlling spirit. The Great Spirit became a
distinct existence, a pervading power in the universe, and a dispenser of
justice. Many tribes now pray to him, though still clinging obstinately
to their ancient superstitions; and with some, as the heathen portion of
the modern Iroquois, he is clothed with attributes of moral good.

[ In studying the writers of the last and of the present century, it is
to be remembered that their observations were made upon savages who had
been for generations in contact, immediate or otherwise, with the
doctrines of Christianity. Many observers have interpreted the religious
ideas of the Indians after preconceived ideas of their own; and it may
safely be affirmed that an Indian will respond with a grunt of
acquiescence to any question whatever touching his spiritual state.
Loskiel and the simple-minded Heckewelder write from a missionary point
of view; Adair, to support a theory of descent from the Jews; the worthy
theologian, Jarvis, to maintain his dogma, that all religious ideas of
the heathen world are perversions of revelation; and so, in a greater or
less degree, of many others. By far the most close and accurate
observers of Indian superstition were the French and Italian Jesuits of
the first half of the seventeenth century. Their opportunities were
unrivalled; and they used them in a spirit of faithful inquiry,
accumulating facts, and leaving theory to their successors. Of recent
American writers, no one has given so much attention to the subject as
Mr. Schoolcraft; but, in view of his opportunities and his zeal, his
results are most unsatisfactory. The work in six large quarto volumes,