There is one safe starting point, and only one, for a correctly balanced estimate of the Indian. He was essentially a physical being. Believing both in a supreme good deity and an evil spirit, and also in an existence after death, religion was not, however, a predominating factor and influence in his life and institutions. In this respect he differed from most aboriginal and peculiar types. Of a stolid, stoical, and phlegmatic nature, possessing little imagination, he was neither capable of spiritual exaltation nor characteristically subject to superstitious awe and fear. Idolatrous practices he had none. Among all the objects of Indian handiwork that have come down to us-- at least such as belong to this section of the country, -- including the remains of pre-Europeau peoples, there are none that are suggestive of worship. He appears to have had no fanatic ceremonials except those of the "medicine man," which were extemporized functions for immediate

■t .if n

tics for different derivations-- which ar ceedingly varied -- by Mr. William W Tooker. in the " Brooklyn Eagle Almanac 1897, ni». 270-281. lt the of the word theas earliest conclusion Manhattan, thai so far has beenformdiscovered, was

___s History lie says: " If the deriHeckewelder gives is accurate, Van der would have arewritten: the Inmmm?P8. notwhich rich and ' In expressive,

they have no word to express Drunken men they call fools.""

drunkenness.

ABORIGINAL

INHABITANTS

physical ends rather than regularly ordained formularies expressive of a real system of abstractions. He was a pare physical barbarian. His conceptions of principles of right and wrong, of social obligations, and of good and bad conduct, wore limited to experience and customs having no other relations than to physical well being. Thus there was neither sensibility nor grossness in his character, and thus he stood solitary and aloof from tin- rest of mankind.