all _Ecannum_, less powerful, but more benign than the former, having
seen men in their state of imperfection, took a sharp stone and laid
open their mouths and eyes; he gave agility, also, to their feet, and
motion to their hands. This compassionate divinity was not content with
conferring these first benefits; he taught men to make canoes, paddles,
nets, and, in a word, all the tools and instruments they use. He did
still more: he threw great rocks into the river, to obstruct the ascent
of the salmon, in order that they might take as many as they wanted.

The natives of the Columbia further believe, that the men who have been
good citizens, good fathers, good husbands, and good fishermen, who
have not committed murder, &c., will be perfectly happy after their
death, and will go to a country where they will find fish, fruit, &c.,
in abundance; and that, on the contrary, those who have lived wickedly,
will inhabit a country of fasting and want, where they will eat nothing
but bitter roots, and have nothing to drink but salt water.

If these notions in regard to the origin and future destiny of man are
not exactly conformed to sound reason or to divine revelation, it will
be allowed that they do not offer the absurdities with which the
mythologies of many ancient nations abound.[Z] The article which makes
skill in fishing a virtue worthy of being compensated in the other
world, does not disfigure the salutary and consoling dogma of the
immortality of the soul, and that of future rewards and punishments, so
much as one is at first tempted to think; for if we reflect a little, we
shall discover that the skilful fisherman, in laboring for himself,
labors also for society; he is a useful citizen, who contributes, as
much as lies in his power, to avert from his fellow-men the scourge of
famine; he is a religious man, who honors the divinity by making use of
his benefits. Surely a great deal of the theology of a future life
prevalent among civilized men, does not excel this in profundity.

[Footnote Z: It seems clear that this Indian mythology is a form of the
primitive tradition obscured by symbol. The creation of man by the
Supreme Divinity, but in an imperfect state ("his eyes not yet opened"),
his deliverance from that condition by an inferior but more beneficent
deity (the Satan of the Bible), and the progress of the emancipated and
enlightened being, in the arts of industry, are clearly set forth. Thus
the devil has his