land where they are henceforth to dwell.[1] This and many similar beliefs current in the religions of the world, which need not be particularised here, seem best explained as originally nature-myths, afterwards adapted to a religious purpose. A different conception was recorded so early as 1623, by Captain John Smith among the Massachusetts, whose name is still borne by the New England district they once inhabited: They say, at first there was no king but Kiehtan, that dwelleth far westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when they die, and have plenty of all things. The bad men go thither also and knock at the door, but he bids them go wander in endless want and misery, for they shall not stay there.[2] Lastly, the Salish Indians of Oregon say that the good go to a happy hunting-ground of endless game, while the bad go to a place where there is eternal snow, hunger, and thirst, and are tantalised by the sight of game they cannot kill, and water they cannot drink.[3] If, now, in looking at these records, the doubts which beset them can be put aside, and the accounts of the different fates assigned to the good and wicked can be accepted as belonging to genuine native American religion and if, moreover, it be considered that the goodness and wickedness for which men are to be thus rewarded and punished are moral qualities, however undeveloped in definition, this will amount to an admission that the doctrine of moral retribution at any rate appears within the range of savage theology. Such a view, however, by no means invalidates the view here put forward as to the historical development of the doctrine, but only goes to prove at how early a stage it may have begun to take place. The general mass of evidence still remains to show the savage doctrine of the future state, as originally involving no moral retribution,
- ↑ Brebeuf in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1635, p. 35; 1636, p. 105. Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. ii. p. 127; Long's 'Exp.' vol. i. p. 180. See Brinton, p. 247; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 191, vol. iii. p. 197; and the collection of myths of the Heaven-Bridge and Heaven-Gulf in 'Early History of Mankind,' chap. xii.
- ↑ Smith, 'New England,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 244.
- ↑ Wilson in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 303.
