able. Thus also, among the North American Indians, the native religion was modified under the influence of ideas borrowed from the white men, and there arose a full dualistic scheme, of which Loskiel, a Moravian missionary conversant especially with Algonquin and Iroquois tribes, gives the following suggestive particulars, dating from 1794. 'They (the Indians) first received in modern times through the Europeans the idea of the Devil, the Prince of Darkness. They consider him as a very mighty spirit, who can only do evil, and therefore call him the Evil One. Thus they now believe in a great good and a great evil spirit; to the one they ascribe all good, and to the other all evil. About thirty years ago, a remarkable change took place in the religious opinions of the Indians. Some preachers of their own nation pretended to have received revelations from above, to have travelled into heaven, and conversed with God. They gave different accounts of their journey to heaven, but all agreed in this, that no one could arrive there without great danger; for the road runs close by the gates of hell. There the Devil lies in ambush, and snatches at every one who is going to God. Now those who have passed by this dangerous place unhurt, come first to the Son of God, and from him to God himself, from whom they pretend to have received a commandment, to instruct the Indians in the way to heaven. By them the Indians were informed that heaven was the dwelling of God, and hell that of the Devil. Some of these preachers had not indeed reached the dwelling of God, but professed to have approached near enough to hear the cocks in heaven crow, or to see the smoke of the chimneys in heaven, &c., &c.'[1]
Such unequivocal proofs that savage tribes can adopt and work into the midst of their native beliefs the European doctrine of the Good and Evil Spirit, must induce us to criticize keenly all recorded accounts of the religion of un-
- ↑ Loskiel, 'Gesch. der Mission unter den Ind. in Nord-Amer.' part i. ch. 3.
