orld ascribed the godship of the universe
to the subtile, ineffable, and indestructible essences of fire and
light, as revealed in the sun. Such were the errors of the search for
divine truth, power, and a controllable Deity, which early developed
themselves in the dogmas of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, and
wandering hordes of Northern Asia.

Authors inform us that the worship of the sun lies at the foundation of
all the ancient mythologies, deeply enveloped as they are, when
followed over Asia Minor and Europe, in symbolic and linguistical
subtleties and refinements. The symbolical fires erected on temples and
altars to Baal, Chemosh, and Moloch, burned brightly in the valley of
the Euphrates,[5] long before the pyramids of Egypt were erected, or
its priestly-hoarded hieroglyphic wisdom resulted in a phonetic
alphabet. In Persia, these altars were guarded and religiously fed by a
consecrated body of magical priesthood, who recognized a Deity in the
essence of an eternal fire and a world-pervading light.

The same dogma, derived eastwardly and not westwardly through Europe,
was fully installed at Atacama and Cuzco, in Peru, at Cholulu, on the
magnificent and volcano-lighted peaks of Mexico; and along the fertile
deltas of the Mississippi valley. Altar-beds for a sacred fire, lit to
the Great Spirit, under the name and symbolic form of Ceezis, or the
sun, where the frankincense of the nicotiana was offered, with hymns
and genuflections, have been discovered, in many instances, under the
earth-heaps and artificial mounds and places of sepulture of the
ancient inhabitants. Intelligent Indians yet living, among the North
American tribes, point out the symbol of the sun, in their ancient
muzzinabikons, or rock-inscriptions, and also amid the idiographic
tracery and bark-scrolls of the hieratic and magical medicine songs.

With a cosmogony which ascribes the creation of the Geezha Monedo, who
is symbolized by the sun, the myth of Hiawatha is almost a necessary
consequence in carrying out his mundane intentions to the tribes, who
believed themselves to be peculiar objects of his love and benevolence.
This myth is noticed by the earliest explorers of this continent, who
have bestowed attention on the subject, under the various names of
Inigorio, Yoskika, Taren-Yawagon, Atahentsic, Manabozho, and Micabo. A
mythology appears indispensable to a rude and ignorant race like the
Indians. Their vocabulary is nearly limited to