As we shall find among the Chinese, the Indians worshiped the spirits of their dead ancestors. As among the Chinese, the periodical offering of cakes, libations, flesh or viands at the grave to ancestors, is seen to be an idea incorporated into the practice of the American, at least the Algonic Indians. These Indians, believing in the twofold nature of the soul, and that the soul sensorial abides for a time with the body in the grave, requiring food for its ghostly existence and journeyings, deposit meat and other food at and after the time of interment. _This custom is universal_, and was one of their earliest traits. Few things in savage life are of more singular interest than the ceremonies of a burial. Some of the tribes, for instance, take the body of their dead, and having clothed it in the best robes and ornaments, furnish it with many articles which are supposed most desirable, and, wrapping the whole carefully in soft, wet hides, place the precious burden on a scaffold several feet high. In the course of time, the scaffold falls; then the relatives assemble and bury the remains, except the skull; this they place on the ground, where there are perhaps a hundred skulls in a circle, all looking inward. About this place of skulls the women are often seen, sitting with their work for hours at a time, holding in their laps the skull of a dead child; and not unfrequently they are seen to clasp these skulls in their arms and lie down, talking as if to a living child, until they fall asleep. The Sioux Indians wrap their dead in skins, and lodge them in the branches of trees, never forgetting to place a wooden dish near the head, that the friend may quench his thirst in the long journey he is supposed to have begun. Among the Patagonians the dead are frequently reduced to skeleton before burial, and are washed and arrayed in new clothing once a year. The bodies, while being prepared, are laid on platforms and guarded by the relatives, who, dressed in long robes, strike the ground continually with spears or staves, and keep up a mournful song to drive away the spirits, who they fear are unfriendly to the dead. [Illustration: INDIAN BURIAL PLACE.] The Indians, like the Africans, worship fetiches or material objects in which either the gods personally or some supernatural power is supposed to dwell. It not infrequently happens that if an Indian dreams of an idol or fetich of a certain form, when he wakes he proceeds to make it according to the pattern of his vision, and this is the secret history of many of the grotesque forms which are favorite symbols with them in their sacred rites. These they designate Manitos. [Illustration: INDIAN IMAGE. Seen in a dream and made by a Medicine Man.] INDIAN LEGENDS.