the shamans of all the countries in Northern Asia, where
neither Buddhism nor Islamism has yet penetrated."

Of the American nations, the prevailing opinion, according to Loskiel,
is--

"'That there is one God, or, as they call him, one Great and Good
Spirit.' It seems, from the testimony of this writer, which is
supported by the evidence of all those who have conversed with the
aboriginal nations of North America, that the conceptions of these
nations respecting the Deity are much more complete and
philosophical than those of the most savage people in the Old
Continent. They suppose him literally to be the creator of heaven
and earth, of men and all other creatures; they represent him as
almighty, and able to do as much good as he pleases; 'nor do they
doubt that he is kindly disposed towards men, because he imparts
power to plants to grow, causes rain and sunshine, and gives fish
and venison to man for his support;' these gifts, however, to the
Indians exclusively. 'They are convinced that God requires of them
to do good, and to eschew evil.' We may observe that, in these
particulars, the Americans resemble the Northern Asiatics. We are
assured by the late traveller, M. Erman, on the authority of the
metropolitan Philophei, who lived among the Ostiaks on the Oby,
that these people had, before Christian missionaries ever came
among them, a belief in the existence of a Supreme Deity, of whose
nature they had pure and exalted ideas, and to whom they affirmed
that they never made offerings, nor had they represented his form;
while to inferior gods, and particularly to Oertidk, who was a sort
of mediator, and whose name, as it was preserved among the Magyars,
Oerdig, was used by the monks as a designator for the devil, they
made divers gifts; they performed before his image dances, which
Erman, who visited the Kolushians on the Sitcka, declares to be
precisely similar to the war-dances of those Americans. Some of the
American people make images of the Manittos.

"Besides the Supreme Deity, the American nations believe in a
number of inferior spirits, whom the Delaware Indians term
Manittos; they are both good and evil. 'From the accounts of the
oldest Indians,' says Loskiel, 'it appears that when war was in
contemplation, they used to admonish each other