The Myths of the New World Part 2

130: London, 1850.

[18-1] Morse, _Report on the Indian Tribes_, App. p. 352.

[21-1] Gomara states that De Ayllon found tribes on the Atlantic sh.o.r.e not far from Cape Hatteras keeping flocks of deer (_ciervos_) and from their milk making cheese (_Hist. de las Indias_, cap. 43). I attach no importance to this statement, and only mention it to connect it with some other curious notices of the tribe now extinct who occupied that locality. Both De Ayllon and Lawson mention their very light complexions, and the latter saw many with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fair skin; they cultivated when first visited the potato (or the groundnut), tobacco, and cotton (Humboldt); they reckoned time by disks of wood divided into sixty segments (Lederer); and just in this lat.i.tude the most careful determination fixes the mysterious White-man's-land, or Great Ireland of the Icelandic Sagas (see the _American Hist. Mag._, ix. p.

364), where the Scandinavian sea rovers in the eleventh century found men of their own color, clothed in long woven garments, and not less civilized than themselves.

[23-1] The name Eskimo is from the Algonkin word _Eskimantick_, eaters of raw flesh. There is reason to believe that at one time they possessed the Atlantic coast considerably to the south. The Northmen, in the year 1000, found the natives of Vinland, probably near Rhode Island, of the same race as they were familiar with in Labrador. They call them _Skralingar_, chips, and describe them as numerous and short of stature (Eric Rothens Saga, in Mueller, _Sagaenbibliothek_, p. 214). It is curious that the traditions of the Tuscaroras, who placed their arrival on the Virginian coast about 1300, spoke of the race they found there as eaters of raw flesh and ignorant of maize (Lederer, _Account of North America_, in Harris, Voyages).

[25-1] Richardson, _Arctic Expedition_, p. 374.

[25-2] The late Professor W. W. Turner of Was.h.i.+ngton, and Professor Buschmann of Berlin, are the two scholars who have traced the boundaries of this widely dispersed family. The name is drawn from Lake Athapasca in British America.

[25-3] The Cherokee tongue has a limited number of words in common with the Iroquois, and its structural similarity is close. The name is of unknown origin. It should doubtless be spelled _Tsalakie_, a plural form, almost the same as that of the river Tellico, properly Tsaliko (Ramsey, _Annals of Tennessee_, p. 87), on the banks of which their princ.i.p.al towns were situated. Adair's derivation from _cheera_, fire, is worthless, as no such word exists in their language.

[27-1] The term Algonkin may be a corruption of _agomeegwin_, people of the other sh.o.r.e. Algic, often used synonymously, is an adjective manufactured by Mr. Schoolcraft "from the words Alleghany and Atlantic"

(Algic Researches, ii. p. 12). There is no occasion to accept it, as there is no objection to employing Algonkin both as substantive and adjective. Iroquois is a French compound of the native words _hiro_, I have said, and _koue_, an interjection of a.s.sent or applause, terms constantly heard in their councils.

[27-2] Apalachian, which should be spelt with one p, is formed of two Creek words, _apala_, the great sea, the ocean, and the suffix _chi_, people, and means those dwelling by the ocean. That the Natchez were offshoots of the Mayas I was the first to surmise and to prove by a careful comparison of one hundred Natchez words with their equivalents in the Maya dialects. Of these, _five_ have affinities more or less marked to words peculiar to the Huastecas of the river Panuco (a Maya colony), _thirteen_ to words common to Huasteca and Maya, and _thirty-nine_ to words of similar meaning in the latter language. This resemblance may be exemplified by the numerals, one, two, four, seven, eight, twenty. In Natchez they are _hu_, _ah_, _gan_, _uk-woh_, _upku-tepish_, _oka-poo_: in Maya, _hu_, _ca_, _can_, _uk_, _uapxae_, _hunkal_. (See the Am. Hist.

Mag., New Series, vol. i. p. 16, Jan. 1867.)

[28-1] Dakota, a native word, means friends or allies.

[28-2] Rep. of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1854, p. 209.

[29-1] According to Professor Buschmann Aztec is probably from _iztac_, white, and Nahuatlacatl signifies those who speak the language _Nahuatl_, clear sounding, sonorous. The Abbe Bra.s.seur (de Bourbourg), on the other hand, derives the latter from the Quiche _nawal_, intelligent, and adds the amazing information that this is identical with the English _know all_!! (_Hist. du Mexique_, etc., i. p. 102). For in his theory several languages of Central America are derived from the same old Indo-Germanic stock as the English, German, and cognate tongues. Toltec, from _Toltecatl_, means inhabitant of Tollan, which latter may be from _tolin_, rush, and signify the place of rushes. The signification _artificer_, often a.s.signed to Toltecatl, is of later date, and was derived from the famed artistic skill of this early folk (Buschmann, _Aztek. Ortsnamen_, p. 682: Berlin, 1852). The Toltecs are usually spoken of as anterior to the Nahuas, but the Tlascaltecs and natives of Cholollan or Cholula were in fact Toltecs, unless we a.s.sign to this latter name a merely mythical signification. The early migrations of the two Aztec bands and their relations.h.i.+p, it may be said in pa.s.sing, are as yet extremely obscure. The Shoshonees when first known dwelt as far north as the head waters of the Missouri, and in the country now occupied by the Black Feet. Their language, which includes that of the Comanche, Wihinasht, Utah, and kindred bands, was first shown to have many and marked affinities with that of the Aztecs by Professor Buschmann in his great work, _Ueber die Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im nordlichen Mexico und hoheren Amerikanischen Norden_, p. 648: Berlin, 1854.

[31-1] His opinion was founded on an a.n.a.lysis of fifteen words of the secret language of the Incas preserved in the Royal Commentaries of Garcila.s.so de la Vega. On examination, they all proved to be modified forms from the _lengua general_ (Meyen, _Ueber die Ureinwohner von Peru_, p. 6). The Quichuas of Peru must not be confounded with the Quiches of Guatemala. Quiche is the name of a place, and means "many trees;" the derivation of Quichua is unknown. Muyscas means "men." This nation also called themselves Chibchas.

[32-1] The significance of Carib is probably warrior. It may be the same word as Guarani, which also has this meaning. Tupi or Tupa is the name given the thunder, and can only be understood mythically.

[33-1] The Araucanians probably obtained their name from two Quichua words, _ari auccan_, yes! they fight; an idiom very expressive of their warlike character. They had had long and terrible wars with the Incas before the arrival of Pizarro.

[34-1] Since writing the text I have received the admirable work of Dr.

von Martius, _Beitrage zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's zumal Brasilians_, Leipzig, 1867, in which I observe that that profound student considers that there is no doubt but that the Island Caribs, and the Galibis of the main land are descendants from the same stock as the Tupis and Guaranis.

[35-1] _Comptes Rendus_, vol. xxi. p. 1368 sqq.

[35-2] The two best authorities are Daniel Wilson, _The American Cranial Type_, in _Ann. Rep. of the Smithson. Inst._, 1862, p. 240, and J. A.

Meigs, _Cranial Forms of the Amer. Aborigs._: Phila. 1866. They accord in the views expressed in the text and in the rejection of those advocated by Dr. S. G. Morton in the Crania Americana.

[36-1] _Second Visit to the United States_, i. p. 252.

[37-1] Martius, _Von dem Rechtzustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens_, p. 80: Muenchen, 1832; recently republished in his _Beitrage zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's_: Leipzig, 1867.

[38-1] _Athapaskische Sprachstamm_, p. 164: Berlin, 1856.

[38-2] Martius, _Von dem Rechtzustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens_, p. 77.

CHAPTER II.

THE IDEA OF G.o.d.

An intuition common to the species.--Words expressing it in American languages derived either from ideas of above in s.p.a.ce, or of life manifested by breath.--Examples.--No conscious monotheism, and but little idea of immateriality discoverable.--Still less any moral dualism of deities, the Great Good Spirit and the Great Bad Spirit being alike terms and notions of foreign importation.

If we accept the definition that mythology is the idea of G.o.d expressed in symbol, figure, and narrative, and always struggling toward a clearer utterance, it is well not only to trace this idea in its very earliest embodiment in language, but also, for the sake of comparison, to ask what is its latest and most approved expression. The reply to this is given us by Immanuel Kant. He has shown that our reason, dwelling on the facts of experience, constantly seeks the principles which connect them together, and only rests satisfied in the conviction that there is a highest and first principle which reconciles all their discrepancies and binds them into one. This he calls the Ideal of Reason. It must be true, for it is evolved from the laws of reason, our only test of truth.

Furthermore, the sense of personality and the voice of conscience, a.n.a.lyzed to their sources, can only be explained by the a.s.sumption of an infinite personality and an absolute standard of right. Or, if to some all this appears but wire-drawn metaphysical subtlety, they are welcome to the definition of the realist, that the idea of G.o.d is the sum of those intelligent activities which the individual, reasoning from the a.n.a.logy of his own actions, imagines to be behind and to bring about natural phenomena.[44-1] If either of these be correct, it were hard to conceive how any tribe or even any sane man could be without some notion of divinity.

Certainly in America no instance of its absence has been discovered.

Obscure, grotesque, unworthy it often was, but everywhere man was oppressed with a _sensus numinis_, a feeling that invisible, powerful agencies were at work around him, who, as they willed, could help or hurt him. In every heart was an altar to the Unknown G.o.d. Not that it was customary to attach any idea of unity to these unseen powers. The supposition that in ancient times and in very unenlightened conditions, before mythology had grown, a monotheism prevailed, which afterwards at various times was revived by reformers, is a belief that should have pa.s.sed away when the delights of savage life and the praises of a state of nature ceased to be the themes of philosophers. We are speaking of a people little capable of abstraction. The exhibitions of force in nature seemed to them the manifestations of that mysterious power felt by their self-consciousness; to combine these various manifestations and recognize them as the operations of one personality, was a step not easily taken. Yet He is not far from every one of us. "Whenever man thinks clearly, or feels deeply, he conceives G.o.d as self-conscious unity," says Carriere, with admirable insight; and elsewhere, "we have monotheism, not in contrast to polytheism, not clear to the thought, but in living intuition in the religious sentiments."[45-1]

Thus it was among the Indians. Therefore a word is usually found in their languages a.n.a.logous to none in any European tongue, a word comprehending all manifestations of the unseen world, yet conveying no sense of personal unity. It has been rendered spirit, demon, G.o.d, devil, mystery, magic, but commonly and rather absurdly by the English and French, "medicine." In the Algonkin dialects this word is _manito_ and _oki_, in Iroquois _oki_ and _otkon_, the Dakota has _wakan_, the Aztec _teotl_, the Quichua _huaca_, and the Maya _ku_. They all express in its most general form the idea of the supernatural. And as in this word, supernatural, we see a transfer of a conception of place, and that it literally means that which is _above_ the natural world, so in such as we can a.n.a.lyze of these vague and primitive terms the same trope appears discoverable. _Wakan_ as an adverb means _above_, _oki_ is but another orthography for _oghee_, and _otkon_ seems allied to _hetken_, both of which have the same signification.[46-1]

The transfer is no mere figure of speech, but has its origin in the very texture of the human mind. The heavens, the upper regions, are in every religion the supposed abode of the divine. What is higher is always the stronger and the n.o.bler; a _superior_ is one who is better than we are, and therefore a chieftain in Algonkin is called _oghee-ma_, the higher one. There is, moreover, a naif and spontaneous instinct which leads man in his ecstasies of joy, and in his paroxysms of fear or pain, to lift his hands and eyes to the overhanging firmament. There the sun and bright stars sojourn, emblems of glory and stability. Its azure vault has a mysterious attraction which invites the eye to gaze longer and longer into its infinite depths.[46-2] Its color brings thoughts of serenity, peace, suns.h.i.+ne, and warmth. Even the rudest hunting tribes felt these sentiments, and as a metaphor in their speeches, and as a paint expressive of friendly design, blue was in wide use among them.[47-1]

So it came to pa.s.s that the idea of G.o.d was linked to the heavens long ere man asked himself, are the heavens material and G.o.d spiritual, is He one, or is He many? Numerous languages bear trace of this. The Latin Deus, the Greek Zeus, the Sanscrit Dyaus, the Chinese Tien, all originally meant the sky above, and our own word heaven is often employed synonymously with G.o.d. There is at first no personification in these expressions. They embrace all unseen agencies, they are void of personality, and yet to the illogical primitive man there is nothing contradictory in making them the object of his prayers. The Mayas had legions of G.o.ds; "_ku_," says their historian,[47-2] "does not signify any particular G.o.d; yet their prayers are sometimes addressed to _kue_,"

which is the same word in the vocative case.

As the Latins called their united divinities _Superi_, those above, so Captain John Smith found that the Powhatans of Virginia employed the word _oki_, above, in the same sense, and it even had pa.s.sed into a definite personification among them in the shape of an "idol of wood evil-favoredly carved." In purer dialects of the Algonkin it is always indefinite, as in the terms _nipoon oki_, spirit of summer, _pipoon oki_, spirit of winter. Perhaps the word was introduced into Iroquois by the Hurons, neighbors and a.s.sociates of the Algonkins. The Hurons applied it to that demoniac power "who rules the seasons of the year, who holds the winds and the waves in leash, who can give fortune to their undertakings, and relieve all their wants."[48-1] In another and far distant branch of the Iroquois, the Nottoways of southern Virginia, it reappears under, the curious form _quaker_, doubtless a corruption of the Powhatan _qui-oki_, lesser G.o.ds.[48-2] The proper Iroquois name of him to whom they prayed was _garonhia_, which again turns out on examination to be their common word for _sky_, and again in all probability from the verbal root _gar_, to be above.[48-3] In the legends of the Aztecs and Quiches such phrases as "Heart of the Sky,"

"Lord of the Sky," "Prince of the Azure Planisphere," "He above all,"

are of frequent occurrence, and by a still bolder metaphor, the Araucanians, according to Molina, ent.i.tled their greatest G.o.d "The Soul of the Sky."

This last expression leads to another train of thought. As the philosopher, pondering on the workings of self-consciousness, recognizes that various pathways lead up to G.o.d, so the primitive man, in forming his language, sometimes trod one, sometimes another. Whatever else sceptics have questioned, no one has yet presumed to doubt that if a G.o.d and a soul exist at all, they are of like essence. This firm belief has left its impress on language in the names devised to express the supernal, the spiritual world. If we seek hints from languages more familiar to us than the tongues of the Indians, and take for example this word _spiritual_; we find it is from the Latin _spirare_, to blow, to breathe. If in Latin again we look for the derivation of _animus_, the mind, _anima_, the soul, they point to the Greek _anemos_, wind, and _aemi_, to blow. In Greek the words for soul or spirit, _psuche_, _pneuma_, _thumos_, all are directly from verbal roots expressing the motion of the wind or the breath. The Hebrew word _ruah_ is translated in the Old Testament sometimes by wind, sometimes by spirit, sometimes by breath. Etymologically, in fact, ghosts and gusts, breaths and breezes, the Great Spirit and the Great Wind, are one and the same. It is easy to guess the reason of this. The soul is the life, the life is the breath. Invisible, imponderable, quickening with vigorous motion, slackening in rest and sleep, pa.s.sing quite away in death, it is the most obvious sign of life. All nations grasped the a.n.a.logy and identified the one with the other. But the breath is nothing but wind.

How easy, therefore, to look upon the wind that moves up and down and to and fro upon the earth, that carries the clouds, itself unseen, that calls forth the terrible tempests and the various seasons, as the breath, the spirit of G.o.d, as G.o.d himself? So in the Mosaic record of creation, it is said "a mighty wind" pa.s.sed over the formless sea and brought forth the world, and when the Almighty gave to the clay a living soul, he is said to have breathed into it "the wind of lives."

Armed with these a.n.a.logies, we turn to the primitive tongues of America, and find them there as distinct as in the Old World. In Dakota _niya_ is literally breath, figuratively life; in Netela _piuts_ is life, breath, and soul; _silla_, in Eskimo, means air, it means wind, but it is also the word that conveys the highest idea of the world as a whole, and the reasoning faculty. The supreme existence they call _Sillam Innua_, Owner of the Air, or of the All; or _Sillam Nelega_, Lord of the Air or Wind.

In the Yakama tongue of Oregon _wkrisha_ signifies there is wind, _wkrishwit_, life; with the Aztecs, _ehecatl_ expressed both air, life, and the soul, and personified in their myths it was said to have been born of the breath of Tezcatlipoca, their highest divinity, who himself is often called Yoalliehecatl, the Wind of Night.[50-1]

The descent is, indeed, almost imperceptible which leads to the personification of the wind as G.o.d, which merges this manifestation of life and power in one with its unseen, unknown cause. Thus it was a worthy epithet which the Creeks applied to their supreme invisible ruler, when they addressed him as ESAUGETUH EMISSEE, Master of Breath, and doubtless it was at first but a t.i.tle of equivalent purport which the Cherokees, their neighbors, were wont to employ, OONAWLEH UNGGI, Eldest of Winds, but rapidly leading to a complete identification of the divine with the natural phenomena of meteorology. This seems to have taken place in the same group of nations, for the original Choctaw word for Deity was HUSHTOLI, the Storm Wind.[51-1] The idea, indeed, was constantly being lost in the symbol. In the legends of the Quiches, the mysterious creative power is HURAKAN, a name of no signification in their language, one which their remote ancestors brought with them from the Antilles, which finds its meaning in the ancient tongue of Haiti, and which, under the forms of _hurricane_, _ouragan_, _orkan_, was adopted into European marine languages as the native name of the terrible tornado of the Caribbean Sea.[51-2] Mixcohuatl, the Cloud Serpent, chief divinity of several tribes in ancient Mexico, is to this day the correct term in their language for the tropical whirlwind, and the natives of Panama wors.h.i.+pped the same phenomenon under the name Tuyra.[52-1] To kiss the air was in Peru the commonest and simplest sign of adoration to the collective divinities.[52-2]

Many writers on mythology have commented on the prominence so frequently given to the winds. None have traced it to its true source. The facts of meteorology have been thought all sufficient for a solution. As if man ever did or ever could draw the idea of G.o.d from nature! In the ident.i.ty of wind with breath, of breath with life, of life with soul, of soul with G.o.d, lies the far deeper and far truer reason, whose insensible development I have here traced, in outline indeed, but confirmed by the evidence of language itself.

Let none of these expressions, however, be construed to prove the distinct recognition of One Supreme Being. Of monotheism either as displayed in the one personal definite G.o.d of the Semitic races, or in the dim pantheistic sense of the Brahmins, there was not a single instance on the American continent. The missionaries found no word in any of their languages fit to interpret _Deus_, G.o.d. How could they expect it? The a.s.sociations we attach to that name are the acc.u.mulated fruits of nigh two thousand years of Christianity. The phrases Good Spirit, Great Spirit, and similar ones, have occasioned endless discrepancies in the minds of travellers. In most instances they are entirely of modern origin, coined at the suggestion of missionaries, applied to the white man's G.o.d. Very rarely do they bring any conception of personality to the native mind, very rarely do they signify any object of wors.h.i.+p, perhaps never did in the olden times. The Jesuit Relations state positively that there was no one immaterial G.o.d recognized by the Algonkin tribes, and that the t.i.tle, the Great Manito, was introduced first by themselves in its personal sense.[53-1] The supreme Iroquois Deity Neo or Hawaneu, triumphantly adduced by many writers to show the monotheism underlying the native creeds, and upon whose name Mr. Schoolcraft has built some philological reveries, turns out on closer scrutiny to be the result of Christian instruction, and the words themselves to be but corruptions of the French _Dieu_ and _le bon Dieu_![53-2]

Innumerable mysterious forces are in activity around the child of nature; he feels within him something that tells him they are not of his kind, and yet not altogether different from him; he sums them up in one word drawn from sensuous experience. Does he wish to express still more forcibly this sentiment, he doubles the word, or prefixes an adjective, or adds an affix, as the genius of his language may dictate. But it still remains to him but an unapplied abstraction, a mere category of thought, a frame for the All. It is never the object of veneration or sacrifice, no myth brings it down to his comprehension, it is not installed in his temples. Man cannot escape the belief that behind all form is one essence; but the moment he would seize and define it, it eludes his grasp, and by a sorcery more sadly ludicrous than that which blinded t.i.tania, he wors.h.i.+ps not the Infinite he thinks but a base idol of his own making. As in the Zend Avesta behind the eternal struggle of Ormuzd and Ahriman looms up the undisturbed and infinite Zeruana Akerana, as in the pages of the Greek poets we here and there catch glimpses of a Zeus who is not he throned on Olympus, nor he who takes part in the wrangles of the G.o.ds, but stands far off and alone, one yet all, "who was, who is, who will be," so the belief in an Unseen Spirit, who asks neither supplication nor sacrifice, who, as the natives of Texas told Joutel in 1684, "does not concern himself about things here below,"[54-1] who has no name to call him by, and is never a figure in mythology, was doubtless occasionally present to their minds. It was present not more but far less distinctly and often not at all in the more savage tribes, and no a.s.sertion can be more contrary to the laws of religious progress than that which pretends that a purer and more monotheistic religion exists among nations devoid of mythology. There are only two instances on the American continent where the wors.h.i.+p of an immaterial G.o.d was definitely inst.i.tuted, and these as the highest conquests of American natural religions deserve especial mention.

They occurred, as we might expect, in the two most civilized nations, the Quichuas of Peru, and the Nahuas of Tezcuco. It is related that about the year 1440, at a grand religious council held at the consecration of the newly-built temple of the Sun at Cuzco, the Inca Yupanqui rose before the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude and spoke somewhat as follows:--

"Many say that the Sun is the Maker of all things. But he who makes should abide by what he has made. Now many things happen when the Sun is absent; therefore he cannot be the universal creator. And that he is alive at all is doubtful, for his trips do not tire him. Were he a living thing, he would grow weary like ourselves; were he free, he would visit other parts of the heavens. He is like a tethered beast who makes a daily round under the eye of a master; he is like an arrow, which must go whither it is sent, not whither it wishes. I tell you that he, our Father and Master the Sun, must have a lord and master more powerful than himself, who constrains him to his daily circuit without pause or rest."[55-1]

To express this greatest of all existences, a name was proclaimed, based upon that of the highest divinities known to the ancient Aymara race, Illatici Viracocha Pachacamac, literally, the thunder vase, the foam of the sea, animating the world, mysterious and symbolic names drawn from the deepest religious instincts of the soul, whose hidden meanings will be unravelled hereafter. A temple was constructed in a vale by the sea near Callao, wherein his wors.h.i.+p was to be conducted without images or human sacrifices. The Inca was ahead of his age, however, and when the Spaniards visited the temple of Pachacamac in 1525, they found not only the walls adorned with hideous paintings, but an ugly idol of wood representing a man of colossal proportions set up therein, and receiving the prayers of the votaries.[56-1]

No better success attended the attempt of Nezahuatl, lord of Tezcuco, which took place about the same time. He had long prayed to the G.o.ds of his forefathers for a son to inherit his kingdom, and the altars had smoked vainly with the blood of slaughtered victims. At length, in indignation and despair, the prince exclaimed, "Verily, these G.o.ds that I am adoring, what are they but idols of stone without speech or feeling? They could not have made the beauty of the heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars which adorn it, and which light the earth, with its countless streams, its fountains and waters, its trees and plants, and its various inhabitants. There must be some G.o.d, invisible and unknown, who is the universal creator. He alone can console me in my affliction and take away my sorrow." Strengthened in this conviction by a timely fulfilment of his heart's desire, he erected a temple nine stories high to represent the nine heavens, which he dedicated "to the Unknown G.o.d, the Cause of Causes." This temple, he ordained, should never be polluted by blood, nor should any graven image ever be set up within its precincts.[57-1]

In neither case, be it observed, was any attempt made to subst.i.tute another and purer religion for the popular one. The Inca continued to receive the homage of his subjects as a brother of the sun, and the regular services to that luminary were never interrupted. Nor did the prince of Tezcuco afterwards neglect the honors due his national G.o.ds, nor even refrain himself from plunging the knife into the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of captives on the altar of the G.o.d of war.[57-2] They were but expressions of that monotheism which is ever present, "not in contrast to polytheism, but in living intuition in the religious sentiments." If this subtle but true distinction be rightly understood, it will excite no surprise to find such epithets as "endless," "omnipotent,"

"invisible," "adorable," such appellations as "the Maker and Moulder of All," "the Mother and Father of Life," "the One G.o.d complete in perfection and unity," "the Creator of all that is," "the Soul of the World," in use and of undoubted indigenous origin not only among the civilized Aztecs, but even among the Haitians, the Araucanians, the Lenni Lenape, and others.[57-3] It will not seem contradictory to hear of them in a purely polytheistic wors.h.i.+p; we shall be far from regarding them as familiar to the popular mind, and we shall never be led so far astray as to adduce them in evidence of a monotheism in either technical sense of that word. In point of fact they were not applied to any particular G.o.d even in the most enlightened nations, but were terms of laudation and magniloquence used by the priests and devotees of every several G.o.d to do him honor. They prove something in regard to a consciousness of divinity hedging us about, but nothing at all in favor of a recognition of one G.o.d; they exemplify how profound is the conviction of a highest and first principle, but they do not offer the least reason to surmise that this was a living reality in doctrine or practice.