The North American Indian appears to have been, when first discovered, wholly without any distinct religious faith. It is true that some authors have described him as reverencing his manitou, or great spirit, and speaking of some happy hunting ground to which his soul will pass after death; but I am unable to find any reliable testimony in support of this poetic notion. To me it seems that the Red Indian is nothing more than one of a ferocious tribe of men, who, having to subsist by the chase alone, bestows all his thoughts upon getting meat, and driving off his neighbours from interfering in his lands. To such an one a teeming population is equivalent to a diminution in the supply of game, and this, again, involves starvation. With him, therefore, the murder of his neighbours becomes a matter of necessity, one which may be regarded by him as an absolute virtue, a matter of public policy, and essentially a moral duty; and as he is little superior to a tiger or a cat, he does not scruple to add cruelty to homicide. He who has seen a carnivorous beast seize its living prey, disable, without killing it, and then lie by and watch its victim, rising now and again to give it a shake, or a pat with its claw, can well understand how a Blackfoot Indian might gloat over a dying Delaware, or a Mandan torture an Iroquois when he had the chance, each regarding the other as men consider wasps and hornets. Yet, though without religion, the Indian is not without fear. He is terrified by strange noises, and by weird sights; there is a being whom he dreads; and there is in every tribe a "medicine man," who is supposed to have supernatural power, and to be able to attract good or to banish evil fortune from the chief and his people. Practically, the Red Indian is as superstitious about lucky and unlucky days as was the Hebrew David and the Persian Haman, and, prior to the starting of an expedition, the diviner is consulted, who may, possibly, answer in the words of the Lord (?) of Judah, "let it be when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, then thou shalt bestir thyself, for then shall the Lord go out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines" (2 Sam. v. 24).