eing circumscribed, like everything
else belonging to him, by the material world. He believed in a good
spirit, and an evil spirit; but his conception was limited by the ideas
of benefit or injury, _to himself_; indeed, it may safely be doubted,
whether the word "spirit," in its legitimate sense, is at all applicable
to his belief. "Power in a state of exertion," is the more accurate
description of his imperfect notion: abstract existence he never
conceived; the verb "_to be_" except as relating to time, place, and
action, had no meaning in his language.[28] He believed, also, in
subordinate powers of good and evil; but, since his life was occupied
more in averting danger and calamity, than in seeking safety or
happiness, he paid far more respect to the latter than to the former--he
prayed oftener and more fervently to the devils, than to the angels. His
clearest notion of divinity, was that of a being able to injure him;
and, in this sense, his devotion might be given to man, bird, or beast.

There seems to be no doubt, that he believed in a sort of immortality,
even before the missionaries visited his country. But it was not so much
a new state of existence, as a continuation of present life.[29] He
killed horses upon the grave of the departed warrior, that he might be
mounted for his long journey; and buffalo meat and roasted maize were
buried with him, that he might not suffer from hunger.[30] On arriving
in the land of the blest, he believed, that the dead pursued the game of
that country, as he had done in this; and the highest felicity of which
he conceived, was the liberty to hunt unmolested by the war-parties of
his enemies. Heaven was, therefore, in his conception, only a more
genial earth, and its inheritors but keener sportsmen.

That this idea of immortality involved that of accountability, in some
form, seems to admit of no doubt; but this doctrine, like almost all
others belonging to the primitive savage, has been moulded to its
present definite shape, by the long-continued labors of Christian
missionaries.[31] He believed, indeed, that the bad Indians never
reached the happy hunting-grounds, but the distinction between the good
and the bad, in his mind, was not at all clear; and, since the idea of
the passage across the gulf of death most prevalent among all tribes,
is that of a narrow bridge, over which only steady nerves and sure feet
may carry the wanderer, it seems probable that the line was drawn
b