There is no manifestation of the Indian character more extraordinary than his elaborate religious and ritual organization. Fundamental to any real interpretation of Indian life, it is so bewilderingly intricate and so elusive that we can here touch upon only a few of the more definite aspects. No one not a master of this subject can treat it briefly without doing it a certain violence. It is impossible to say that _the Indian_ in general believes this or that, for while there are a few essential deities in his hierarchy that are almost universally accepted, though varying somewhat in nomenclature through the tribes, the differences are legion.[199] Each nation presents its own galaxy of gods who must be separately described to give a just impression of the whole. Wissler says there is “nothing like the supreme over-ruling and personal being” such as we name God, but that the Indian “seems rather to have formed complex and abstract notions of a controlling power or series of powers pervading the universe.”[200] Thrust into life, man finds himself surrounded by potencies wholly beyond his control. These powers, supernal or infernal, must therefore be propitiated, and if man in his ignorance has offended, expiation must be offered and endured. The commonest form of address used in prayers and sacrifices is to “Those Above.” On the authority of a full-blooded Dakota Indian (Ohiyesa),[201] well known by his American name of Charles Alexander Eastman, we are told that the religion of his race is the last thing a white man can hope to understand, for it is something no Indian, still firm in his own faith, will ever talk about, since he is convinced that neither it nor the ceremonies of its celebration will be rightly interpreted. Where all is so vague as to escape true analysis, the question arises, why separate myth and religion? Are they not practically one and inclusive? Alexander discusses this briefly and ably, and concludes that with the Indian, as with all other peoples, it is impossible to identify religion with mythology. The two are intimately related; every mythology is an effort to define a religion; and yet there is no profound parallelism between god and hero, no immutable relation between religious ceremony and mythic tale. [To illustrate his meaning he affirms that] the greatest of Indian mythic heroes, the Trickster-Transformer, is nowhere important in ritual, while Father-Sky and Mother-Earth are of rare appearance in tales.[202]