"Laet avoue qu' Herrera parle d'une espece de bapteme, et de confession usitee dans Yucatan et dans les isles voisines, mais il ajoute qu'il est bien plus naturel d'attribuer toutes ces marques equivoques de Christianisme qu'on a cru apercevoir en plusieurs provinces du Nouveau Monde au demon qui a toujours affecte de contrefaire le culte du vrai Dieu." Charlevoix adds, "Cette remarque est de tous les bons auteurs qui out parle de la religion des peuples nouvellement decouverts, et fondee sur l'autorite des peres de l'Eglise."--Charlevoix, tom. v., p. 28.] [Footnote 249: See Appendix, No. LI. (see Vol II)] [Footnote 250: "The most sensual, degraded, and least intellectual tribes of Northern Asia and America have purer notions of a Spiritual Deity than were possessed of old by the worshipers of Jupiter and Juno under Pericles."--_Progression by Antagonism._ This, according to Lord Lindsay's theory, is to be accounted for by the absence of imagination, these nations being only governed by Sense and Spirit, to the exclusion of intellect in either of its manifestations, Imagination, or Reason.--P. 21, 26.] [Footnote 251: "At the breaking up of the winter," says Hunter, "after having supplied ourselves with such things as were necessary and the situation afforded, all our party visited the spring from which we had procured our supplies of water, and there offered up our orisons to the Great Spirit for having preserved us in health and safety, and for having supplied all our wants. This is the constant practice of the Osages, Kansas, and many other nations of Indians on breaking up their encampments, and is by no means an unimportant ceremony." The habitual piety of the Indian mind is remarked by Heckewelder, and strongly insisted upon by Hunter, and it is satisfactorily proved by the whole tenor of his descriptions, where he throws himself back, as it were, into the feelings peculiar to Indian life. And, indeed, after hearing at a council the broken fragments of an Indian harangue, however imperfectly rendered by an ignorant interpreter, or reading the few specimens of Indian oratory which have been preserved by translation, no one can fail to remark a perpetual and earnest reference to the power and goodness of the Deity. "Brothers! we all belong to one family; we are all children of the Great Spirit," was the commencement of Tecumthe's harangue to the Osages; and he afterward tells them: "When the white men first set foot on our grounds, they were hungry; they had no places on which to spread their blankets or to kindle their fires. They were feeble; they could do nothing for themselves. Our fathers commiserated their distress, and shared freely with them whatever the Great Spirit has given to his red children."--_Quarterly Review._]