Even so, they
came from the Pacific coast, where Eskimo Shamanism exists in its most
decided forms. But in any case it cannot be denied that in the red
Indian mythology of New England, and of Canada and New Brunswick, we
have a collection of vigorous, icy, powerful legends, like those of a
strong northern race, while those of the middle continent, or Chippewa,
are far feebler and gentler. Hiawatha-Manobozho is to Glooskap as a
flute to a war trumpet.
It is absurd to laugh at or pity the Indian for believing in his magic.
Living as he does in the woods, becoming familiar with animals, and
learning how much more intelligent and allied to man they are than
civilized man supposes, he believes they have souls, and were perhaps
originally human. Balaam's ass spoke once for every Christian; every
animal spoke once for the Indian. If a child can be put to sleep by
singing to it, why cannot insensibility to pain or a cure be caused by
the same process? He is told that the wafer becomes the body of Christ;
this may confirm his belief that the Indian god Manobozho turned bits
of his own flesh or his wife's into raccoons, for food. If it is
difficult for any educated or cultivated man to conceive how, if any
condition or phase of supernaturalism be admitted, any other can be
denied, how can the Indian be logically blamed for believing anything?
But the greatest cause of all for a faith in magic is one which the
white man talks about without feeling, and which the Indian feels
without talking about it.
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