One of the most popular misconceptions of the Indian is that of his belief in a “Great Spirit.” Nowhere in American aboriginal life do we find anything approaching such a conception. The Indian was in the animistic stage of religious belief. The _manitou_ of the Algonquins, like the _orenda_ of the Iroquois, was merely the magic power which might exist in objects, forces, animals, and even men, superior to man's natural qualities; and the Indian's religious beliefs centred about his relations to some embodied form of this power. He believed in good spirits and bad, which could be controlled or invoked by prayer, offerings, charms, or incantations, and had developed a large body of myths to explain the universe and his relation to it. No moral concept attached to any of his deities, nor had he developed any idea of future rewards and punishments, although there was a belief in some vague form of life after bodily death. The rites of their primitive religion were in the hands of priests, whose power and influence increase as we proceed southward toward the highly developed ritualism of the Incas and their neighboring civilizations. The priest, acting for the tribe, must not be confused with the “medicine-man,” who depended solely upon his personal ability to establish relations with the magic powers, which he won by extraordinary experiences derived from fasting, prayer, and nervous excitement. The exact classification of the Indians by cultural, archæological, linguistic, and other tests, is a matter of considerable difficulty, but the linguistic, on the whole, is the best. Judged by all of them, however, the aborigines of New England possessed a high degree of unity.[43] At the time of settlement, the entire country along the coast, from Maryland to Hudson Strait, was occupied by natives of the widely distributed Algonquin stock, except for a small number of Beothuks in Newfoundland, and the Esquimaux along the Labrador shore.[44] The Algonquins also extended westward to the Mississippi, and two-thirds of the way across Canada. Imbedded in this otherwise homogeneous mass, the great body of the Iroquois dwelt on both sides of the St. Lawrence, surrounded Lake Erie, and covered all central Pennsylvania and the state of New York, except the lower Hudson. Although not included in the confines of New England, the influence of this highly organized and warlike confederacy was felt far beyond their bounds in every direction.[45] It is impossible to state the numbers which composed the New England tribes at the coming of the whites. Perhaps the original settlers faced in all, throughout New England, five thousand warriors, although this may be too high a figure, and all estimates can be only guesses.[46] Footnote 43: See maps, in Wissler, _The American Indian_, pp. 205, 246, 282. Footnote 44: