Indians, American. Under this title mky be in- cluded all the semi-civilized and wild tribes of North and South America, since the most thorough investiga- tion shows that they were substantially the same peo- ple. In collating information concerning the Indian thought, it is important to distinguish between the forms it assumed before and after contact with Europeans.
1. Sources of Knowledr/e. — Notwithstanding the pro- verbial taciturnity of the North-American Indians, some information has been elicited by oral communication. Many of the tribes, also, have a species of records for their traditions. In some instances these seem to be lit- tle more than mnemonic signs, made on their skins, tents, clothing, mats, and rocks ; but in others, as in Mexico, we find a series of symbols which are a species of idio- graphic writing, wherein signs stand for ideas, as the Arabic numerals do with us. Besides these there must have existed in some localities a phonetic alphabet prior to the coming of the white man. The only one known, liowever, is found with the Mayas, resident in the pe- ninsula of Yucatan. It had "a well-understood alpha- bet of twenty-seven elementary sounds, the letters of which are totally diiferent from those of any other na- tion, and evidently original with themselves."
2. Oriffin. — Much has been written on the origin of the Indian tril)es, and their probable connection with the people of the Old World. Hardwick says, " If no ray of light whatever could be thrown upon the ques- tions which concern the primitive populations of Amer- ica ; if no analogy to the case had existed in the spread of the jMalayo-Polynesian tribes across the islands of the Eastern Archipelago and the Pacific Ocean ; if the speech of the Americans had absolutely no aflinities with other human dialects; if their traditions, meagre as these are, hinted nothing of a distant home and of a perilous migration; if insoluble enigma.s were presented by the physical structure of the Ameriv-ans, or if their moral powers and mental capacities were such as to ex- clude them from a place in the great brotherhood of men ; if, lastly, no resemblance were found, I will not say in primary articles of belief, but in the memory of specific incidents, and in those minor forms of human thought and culture which will hardly bear to be ex- plained on the hypothesis of 'natural evolution,' we might then, perhaps, have cause to hesitate in our deci- sion" (Christ and other ifasters, ii, 120 sq.). There is literally nothing, according to our.ablest writers, either in the bodily structure or psychology of the American tribes to prove an independent origin, or even to beget suspicions touching a plurality of races; while, accord- ing to ]Mr. Squier, of the words known to have been in use in America one hundred and four coincide with Avords found in the languages of Asia and Australia, forty-three with those of Eurojie, and forty with those of Africa. In addition, however, to the migration sug- gested by the above quotations, two circumstances seem to point most clearly to a connection of our aboriginal Indians with the Malay. :Mongol, or Tartar race : 1. The monosyllabic character of their languages; and, 2. The obvious similarity in complexion and general physical constitution. Tlic case of the Aztecs, moreover, to say nothing of the jMexicans and Peruvians, indicates a de- generacy from an earlier civilization, like that of the Chinese and Japanese.
3. Legends.— Ih.e. Indian myths of the creation, th« deluge, the epochs of nature, and the last day, are nu- merous and clear, although it seems more difficult to ascertain here what does and what does not antedate European influence. " Before the creation," said the Muscogees, " a great body of water was alone visible. Two pigeons flew to and fro over its waves, 'and at last spied a blade of grass rising above the surface. Dry land gradually followed, and the islands and continents took their present shapes."
Many of the tribes trace their descent from a raven, "a mighty bird, whose eyes were fire, whose glances were lightning, and the clapping of whose wings was thunder. On his descent to the ocean the earth instant- 1}' rose, and remained on the surface of the water. This omnipotent bird then called forth aU the variety of ani- mals." The early Algonquin legends do not speak of any family who escaped the deluge, nor did the Dako- tas, who firmly believed the world had been destroyed by water. Generally, however, the legends made some to have escaped by ascending some mountain, on a raft or canoe, in a cave, or by climbing a tree. The pyra- mids of Cholula, the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, the vast and elaborate edifices in the artificial hills of Yucatan, would seem to have direct reference to the hill on which the ancestors of these people escaped in past deluges, or from the realm of rains, called the Hill of Heaven. They mostly make the last destruction of the world to have been by water, though some few rep- resent it to have been by fire.
4. Religious Beliefs.— It is generally believed that all approximations to monotheism observed among the tribes of the New World are little more than verbal. Their " Great Spirit," as the plirase stands among Eu- ropeans, is at best the highest member of a group of spirits. He may be a personification of the mightiest of all natural energies, but not a personality distinct from nature, and controlling all things by his sovereign Avill. He is devoid of almost everything which consti- tutes the glory of the God of revelation. In spite of whatever grandeur, goodness, or ubiquity he may be endowed with, he exercises no control over the lives of individuals or the government of the world. " There is no attempt," says Mr. Schoolcraft, " by the hunter-priest- hood, jugglers, or powwows, which can be gathered from their oral tradition, to impute to the great, merciful Spirit the attribute of justice, or to make man account- able to him here or hereafter for aberrations from ^'irtue, good-will, truth, or any moral right" {Red Races'). Their ideas of God have been almost exclusively found to be connected with some natural phenomena, and the almost poetic Avay in which they look at it suggests that much of their religious thought received comjjlcx- ion from their hunter-life. For the most part, their conceptions of deit\' seem to have been connected ;\ith the ])henomena of the meteorological or atmosplioric world, and with their observations concerning light and fire. The highest good is generally symbolized as the storm-god or the sun-god, these being sometimes blend- ed and sometimes distinct. We may see an illustration of them as united in their adoration of the four cardi- nal points of the compass, and in their notions of the sacred four birds, four mothers, or four primitive broth- ers, the progenitors of the human family. Their high- est deity is always their highest ideal of civilization and of the arts of peace, and to him they always accord the better attributes of mankind. The god of light is often spoken of as the founder of the nation, sometimes as its progenitor, or introducing arts, sciences, and laws, and as having led them in their earliest wanderings. The sun-god is the dispenser of all radiance and fertility, the being by whose light and heat all creatures ^^'ere gener- ated and sustained, the highest pitch of excellence ; and even when transformed into a god of battle, and wor- shipped with horrid and incongruous rites, or fed by human hecatombs, he never ceased to occupy the fore- most rank among the good divinities. He was ever the