py land; the sufferings of
life are endured no more, and its sweetest pleasures are perpetuated and
increased; his wife is tender and obedient, his children dutiful and
affectionate. In this country of eternal happiness, the Indian hopes to
be again received into the favor of the Great Spirit, and to rejoice in
his glorious presence.[258] But in his simple mind there is a deep and
enduring conviction that admission to this delightful country of souls
can only be attained by good and noble actions in this mortal life. For
the bad men there is a fate terribly different--endless afflictions,
want, and misery; a land of hideous desolation; barren, parched, and
dreary hunting-grounds, the abode of evil and malignant spirits, whose
office is to torture, whose pleasure is to enhance the misery of the
condemned. It is also almost universally believed that the Great Spirit
manifests his wrath or his favor to the evil and the good in their
journey to the land of souls. After death the Indian believes that he is
supplied with a canoe; and if he has been a virtuous warrior, or
otherwise worthy, he is guided across the vast deep to a haven of
eternal happiness and peace by the hand of the Great Spirit; but if his
life be stained with cowardice, vice, or negligence of duty, he is
abandoned to the malignity of evil genii, driven about by storms and
darkness over that unknown sea, and at length cast ashore on the barren
land, where everlasting torments are his portion.[259]

The Indians generally believe in the existence of a Spirit of Evil, and
occasionally pray to him in deprecation of his wrath. They do not doubt
his inferiority to the Great Spirit, but they believe that he has the
power to inflict torments and punishments upon the human race, and that
he has a malignant delight in its exercise.

The souls of the lower animals are also held by the Red Man to be
immortal: he recognizes a certain portion of understanding in them, and
each creature is supposed to possess a guardian spirit peculiar to
itself. He only claims a superiority in degree of intelligence and power
over the beasts of the field, Man is but the king of animals. In the
world of souls are to be found the shades of every thing that breathes
the breath of life. However, he takes little pains to arrange or develop
these strange ideas. The enlightened heathen philosophers of antiquity
were not more successful.

To penetrate the mysteries of the future has always been