Oh! replied Tom, that is a very easy way of building rocks, rivers and mountains, to say the Great Spirit done it; but who made the Great Spirit you are always talking about? Who has ever seen or heard him? I can’t answer that, replied Drake; I only know what my squaw mother told me; that the Great Spirit made all these things, and the Indian thinks he sees the Great Spirit in the lofty mountain, foaming streams and rustling leaves. He thinks he hears Him in the whistling wind, the roaring cataract and the belching thunder. He thinks he feels Him here, (laying his hand on his heart.) He believes that when he dies he will meet this Great Spirit in the happy hunting grounds, never to part again. But Tom, what does your own good mother tell you about these things? Tom seemed to awake from a dream. He had listened attentively to what his companion had said, and it seemed to have awakened new ideas in his mind. My mother, replied Tom, talks about these things in a different way. She hates the Indian and the Indian’s Great Spirit. She says God done all these wonderful things, and she reads to us from an old leather book, held together by iron straps; that God made the mountains and rivers; the trees and flowers; the birds and the fish; the thunder and the lightning; and last of all he made man; and that if we are good, when we die we will go to God and live with him forever. Did your mother or any of you ever see God? asked Drake. No, replied Tom, mother says God is a Spirit and can’t be seen, but is in everything and is everywhere; that he is now looking at us and hears what we say. It was now Drake’s turn to be astonished. The white man’s God saw all that was said and done: He even heard what he and Tom was talking about. Throwing himself on the other side, he remained silent for a few moments, and then said: Tom, I guess there ain’t much difference between the white man’s God and the Indian’s Great Spirit. Neither of them have been seen, but both of them have done all these wonderous works. It looks to me that they are the same certain something that we don’t know—can’t know much about until we arrive at the Great Hunting Grounds. Thus, these untutored youths speculated upon what has racked the brains of philosophers of all ages, and with about the same results. I say, Tom, do you think that the Great God, or Great Spirit, (I don’t think it makes much difference which you call them,) works as we do? That he has hands, feet, eyes and ears? That he smooths these rocks as we do the stones that we grind corn with? That it was in this way he made the Bottle Rocks that stick up in the Neversink river?