anish writers
assert that sometimes a whole day was consumed in properly choosing and
adjusting one delicate feather, the artist patiently experimenting until
the hue and position of the feather, viewed from different points, and
under different lights, became satisfactory to his eye.<47>

This disregard of time is a thoroughly Indian trait of character. Years
would be spent in the manufacture of a choice weapon. The impression is
given that these feather-workers formed a craft, or order, and that
they lived by themselves. But this would be such an innovation on the
workings of the gens that there is probably no foundation for it.

We will now consider the subject of religion. We can never judge of
the real state of culture of a people by their advance in the arts of
government and of living alone. Constituted as men are, they can not
help evolving, in the course of time, religious conceptions, and the
result is that almost all the races and tribes of men have some system
of belief, or, at any rate, some manner of accounting for the present
condition of affairs, and some theory as to a future state. It is true
that these theories and beliefs are often very foolish and childish,
still they are not on that account devoid of interest. From our present
standpoint, we can clearly see that the religions belief of a people
is a very good index of their culture. At first such conceptions are
necessarily rude, but as the people advanced in culture, they become
clearer.

Fearing that we will be misunderstood in the last statement, we will
state to whom it applies. The Christian world hold that God revealed
himself to his chosen people, and that we draw from his Word what is
permitted mortals to know of his government and the future world. We
make no question but that this is true. But long before there was a
Hebrew people there was a Paleolithic race, who doubtless had some
vague, shadowy, ill defined idea of supernatural power, and sought, in
some infantile way, to appease the same. Afterwards, but long before the
glories of Solomon, a Neolithic people were living in Palestine, and the
same culture was wide-spread over the world. To this day a large part
of the world's inhabitants have never so much as heard of the Christian
religion. It is to such people that we especially refer.

The religious beliefs of the Indians have not been fully studied as yet;
but, until that is done, it is scarcely possible to understand and fully