.[241-2]

That there are logical contradictions in this belief and these
ceremonies, that the fire is always in the same spot, that the weapons
and utensils are not carried away by the departed, and that the food
placed for his sustenance remains untouched, is very true. But those who
would therefore argue that they were not intended for the benefit of the
soul, and seek some more recondite meaning in them as "unconscious
emblems of struggling faith or expressions of inward emotions,"[242-1]
are led astray by the very simplicity of their real intention. Where is
the faith, where the science, that does not involve logical
contradictions just as gross as these? They are tolerable to us merely
because we are used to them. What value has the evidence of the senses
anywhere against a religious faith? None whatever. A stumbling block
though this be to the materialist, it is the universal truth, and as
such it is well to accept it as an experimental fact.

The preconceived opinions that saw in the meteorological myths of the
Indian, a conflict between the Spirit of Good and the Spirit of Evil,
have with like unconscious error falsified his doctrine of a future
life, and almost without an exception drawn it more or less in the
likeness of the Christian heaven, hell, and purgatory. Very faint traces
of any such belief except where derived from the missionaries are
visible in the New World. Nowhere was any well-defined doctrine that
moral turpitude was judged and punished in the next-world. No contrast
is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the
worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the
niggard. The typical belief of the tribes of the United States was well
expressed in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for
the Creek nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red
people believe in a future state of rewards and punishments? "We have an
opinion that those who have behaved well are taken under the care of
Esaugetuh Emissee, and assisted; and that those who have behaved ill
are left to shift for themselves; and that there is no other
punishment."[243-1]

Neither the delights of a heaven on the one hand, nor the terrors of a
hell on the other, were ever held out by priests or sages as an
incentive to well-doing, or a warning to the evil-disposed. Different
fates, indeed, awaited the departed souls, but these rarely, if ever,
were decided by thei