They believed in rewards and punishments hereafter, and they held that after death the souls of the good went to the home of Cantantowit, far away in the good southwest. There they were delivered from every sorrow and preserved from all suflering. The pleasures they there enjoyed were similar in character with those they had known here, but their perfection was more complete and their abundance exhaustleas. The wicked knocked also at the same door, but were denied admittance, and, being turned away^ they wandered forever in a state of horror and restless discontent.

It is extremely difficult to form a correct estimate of the Indian's character before that character became changed by contact with the Europeans. History teaches us how quickly an inferior race becomes impressed by the traits of a stronger people coming among them. Unfortunately, that which is evil is much more quickly imitated than the noble and good. Before the European became sufficiently acquainted with the Indian to be capable of judging of his character, that character had been changed by contact with the observer himself, so that he saw, in part, the reflection of himself in the subject before him. At best, there was presented only a dissolving view that was transformed before the observer's gaze. The Indian was immediately called a drunkard, and yet he had no beverage whatever that could intoxicate, and no drug that answered any similar purpose. The first Indian who felt the influence of alcohol found it in the cabin of the " Half-Moon." So, also, with other vices. True, the Indian was a barbarian. He showed no evidence of having been in any way better or more civilized in the seventeenth century