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. All sensitive and imaginative races, like those of Mexico, South America, the West Indies, and the Orient, easily commingle with European conquerors; ami the same is true of strictly gross peoples, like the heathenish native tribes of Africa. Sensibility and grossness, like genius and insanity, are, indeed, closely allied; where either quality is present it affords the fundamentals ofsocial communion for cultivated man, but where both are lacking no possible basis for association exists. In these and like reflections may perhaps be found the true key to the character of the Indian. As we have indicated, the religion of the Westchester and kindred Indians did not rise to the dignity of a defined institution. By the term, the Indian religion, we understand only a set of elementary beliefs, unaccompanied by an establishment of any kind. The Great Spirit of the Indians of this locality was called Cantantowit, who was good, all-wise, and all-powerful, and to whose happy hunting grounds they hoped to go after death, although their beliefs also comprehended the idea of exclusion from those realms of such Indians as were regarded by him with displeasure. The Spirit of Evil they called Hobbaniocko. The home of Cantantowit they located in the southwest, whence came the fair winds; ami they accordingly interred their dead in a sitting position with their faces looking in that direction and their valuable possessions, including food for the soul's journey, beside them.