"Besides the Supreme Deity, the American nations believe in a number of inferior spirits, whom the Delaware Indians term Manittos; they are both good and evil. 'From the accounts of the oldest Indians,' says Loskiel, 'it appears that when war was in contemplation, they used to admonish each other to hearken to the good, and not to evil spirits--the former always recommending peace.' They had formerly no notion of a devil, or evil being, in the Christian or Eastern sense of the term, but readily adopted, according to Loskiel, such a belief from the white people. They have among them preachers, who pretend to have received revelations, and who dispute and teach different opinions. Some pretend to have travelled near to the dwelling of God, or near enough to hear the cocks crow, and see the smoke of the chimneys in heaven; others declare that no one ever knew the dwelling-place of God, but that the abode of the Good Spirit is above the blue sky, and that the road to it is the milky way--a notion, by the way, which Beausobre and others have traced in the remains of the Manicheans, and other Eastern philosophers. The Americans believe in the existence of souls distinct from bodies, and many of them in the transmigration of souls. According to Loskiel, they declare, 'that Indians cannot die eternally; for even Indian corn is vivified, and rises again.' The general opinion among them is, that the souls of the good alone go to a place abounding in all earthly pleasures, while the wicked wander about dejected and melancholy. Like other nations, they had sacrifices. 'Sacrifices,' says Loskiel, 'made with a view to pacify God and the subordinate deities, are of a very ancient date among them, and considered in so sacred a light, that unless they are performed in a time and manner acceptable, illness, misfortune, and death would befall them and their families.' They offer on these occasions hares, bear's flesh, and Indian corn. Many nations have, besides other stated times of sacrifice, one principal festival in two years, when they sacrifice an animal, and make a point of eating the whole.