"'That there is one God, or, as they call him, one Great and Good Spirit.' It seems, from the testimony of this writer, which is supported by the evidence of all those who have conversed with the aboriginal nations of North America, that the conceptions of these nations respecting the Deity are much more complete and philosophical than those of the most savage people in the Old Continent. They suppose him literally to be the creator of heaven and earth, of men and all other creatures; they represent him as almighty, and able to do as much good as he pleases; 'nor do they doubt that he is kindly disposed towards men, because he imparts power to plants to grow, causes rain and sunshine, and gives fish and venison to man for his support;' these gifts, however, to the Indians exclusively. 'They are convinced that God requires of them to do good, and to eschew evil.' We may observe that, in these particulars, the Americans resemble the Northern Asiatics. We are assured by the late traveller, M. Erman, on the authority of the metropolitan Philophei, who lived among the Ostiaks on the Oby, that these people had, before Christian missionaries ever came among them, a belief in the existence of a Supreme Deity, of whose nature they had pure and exalted ideas, and to whom they affirmed that they never made offerings, nor had they represented his form; while to inferior gods, and particularly to Oertidk, who was a sort of mediator, and whose name, as it was preserved among the Magyars, Oerdig, was used by the monks as a designator for the devil, they made divers gifts; they performed before his image dances, which Erman, who visited the Kolushians on the Sitcka, declares to be precisely similar to the war-dances of those Americans. Some of the American people make images of the Manittos.