The appearance of idolatry at a grade above the lowest of known human culture, and its development in extent and elaborateness under higher conditions of civilization, are well displayed among the native races of America. 'Conspicuous by its absence' among many of the lower tribes, image-worship comes plainly into view toward the upper levels of savagery, as where, for instance, Brazilian native tribes set up in their huts, or in the recesses of the forest, their pygmy heaven-descended figures of wax or wood;[1] or where the Mandans, howling and whining, made their prayers before puppets of grass and skins; or where the spiritual beings of the Algonquins (manitu) or the Hurons (oki) were represented by, and in language identified with, the carved wooden heads or more complete images to which worship and sacrifice were offered. Among the Virginians and other of the more cultured Southern tribes, these idols even had temples to dwell in.[2] The discoverers of the New World found idolatry an accepted institution among the islanders of the West Indies. These strong animists are recorded to have carved their little images in the shapes in which they believed the spirits themselves to have appeared to them; and some human figures bore the names of ancestors in memory of them. The images of such 'cemi' or spirits, some animal, but most of human type, were found by thousands; and it is even declared that an island near Hayti had a population of idol-makers, who especially made images of nocturnal spectres. The spirit could be conveyed with the image, both were called 'cemi,' and in the local accounts of sacrifices, oracles, and miracles, the deity and the idol are mixed together in a way which at least shows the extreme closeness of their connexion in the native
- ↑ J. G. Müller, Amer. Urrelig.p. 263; Meiners, vol i..p, 163.
- ↑ Loskiel, 'Ind. of N. A.' vol. i. p. 39. Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 14. Waitz, vol. iii. p. 203; J. G. Müller, pp.. 95-8, 128.
J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.' p. 393; Ellis, 'Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 395; Castrén, 'Finnische Mythologie,' p. 193, &c.; Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii.; Köppen, 'Rel. des Buddha,' vol. i. p. 493, &c.; Grote, 'Hist. of Greece.'
