INDIANS, a term alike applicable to the natives of India and America; but as we have considered the former under the name of Hindoos, we shall confine this article to the latter; and begin with the natives of North America, noticing some striking peculiarities of their ancient pagan notions and idolatries.
The aborigines of New England not only believed in a plurality of gods, who made and govern the several nations of the world, but they made deities of every thing they imagined to be great, powerful, beneficial, or hurtful to mankind; yet they conceived an almighty Being, who dwells in the southwest regions of the heavens, to be superiour to all the rest. This almighty Being they called Kichtan, who at first, according to their tradition, made a man and a woman out of a stone; but upon some dislike destroyed them again; and then made another couple out of a tree, from whom descended all the nations of the earth: but how they came to be scattered and dispersed into countries so remote from one another, they cannot tell. They believed their supreme God to be a good being, and paid a sort of acknowledgment to him for plenty, victory, and other benefits: But there is another power, which they call hobamocko, (i. e. the devil,) of whom they stood in greater awe, and worshipped merely from a principle of fear. The immortality of the soul was in some sort univerally believed among them. When good men die, they said, their spirits go to Kichtan, where they meet their friends, and enjoy all manner of pleasures. When wicked men die, they go to Kichtan also; but are commanded to walk away, and to wander about in restless discontent and darkness forever.
Mr. Brainerd, who was a pious and successful missionary among the Indians on the Susquehannah and Delaware rivers, in 1744, gives the following account of their religious sentiments:—" After the coming of the white people, the Indians in New Jersey, who once held a plurality of deities, supposed there were only three, because they saw people of three kinds of complexion, viz. whites, negroes, and themselves. It is a notion pretty generally prevailing among them, that it was not the same God that made them who made us; but that, they were created after the white people; and it is probable, they suppose their God gained some special skill by seeing the white people made, and so made them better. With regard to a future state of existence, many of them imagine, that the chichung, i. e. the shadow, or what survives the body, will at death go southward, to some unknown place, and enjoy some kind of happiness-—such as hunting, feasting, dancing, or the like; and never be weary of these pleasures. They believe that most will be happy; and that those who are not so, will be punished only with privation, being excluded from the walls of the good world, where happy spirits reside. These rewards and punishments they suppose to depend entirely on their behaviour towards mankind, and to have no reference to any thing which relates to the worship of the Supreme Being.".
The original inhabitants of Canada, like other heathen, had an idea of a supreme Being; whom they considered as the creator and governour of the world. It is said that most of the nations which speak the Algonquin language five this being the appellation of the Great Hare, but some call him Michabou, and other Atahocan. They believe that he was born upon the waters, together with his whole court, who were composed of four-footed animals, like himself that he formed the earth of a grain of sand taken from the bottom of the ocean; and that he created men of the bodies of dead animals. Some mention a god of the waters, who opposed the designs of the Great Hare, who is called the Great Tiger. They have a third called Matcomek, whom they invoke in the winter season.
The Agreskoui of the Hurons, and the Agreskouse of the Iroquois, are, in the opinion of these nations, the sovereign being, and god of war. These Indians do not give the same original to mankind with the Algonquins; for they do not ascend so high as the first creation. According to them, there were in the beginning six men in the world; but they cannot tell who placed them there.
The gods of the Indians are supposed to have bodies, and to live much in the same manner as themselves , but without any of the inconveniences to which they are subject. The word spirit, among them, signifies only a being of a more excellent nature than others.