Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism Part 27

No question is raised that such a supposition pertaining to Indian wors.h.i.+p was prevalent in the New England mind down to the close of the seventeenth century. Nor can we doubt that untruthfully the Puritans charged the aborigines with wors.h.i.+ping the one great Devil of Puritan Diabolism, because of our conviction that the red men were in fact communing with their ancestral and numerous other friendly spirits. The white man's erroneous conception that his devil was the red man's G.o.d, had no small influence upon public action in witchcraft times. The idea that their devil had for backers all the aborigines of the continent, made him a more formidable foe than he otherwise would have been, and intensified the ruthlessness of the whites in their persecutions of those of their own complexion and households who were believed to have made a compact to serve the Evil One. Perhaps a modern instance may exhibit with much clearness the real nature of Indian wors.h.i.+p in former ages.

We quote from the Was.h.i.+ngton Chronicle, early in the year 1873, what is there ascribed to General O. O. Howard, who is often called the _Christian Soldier_. He, as commissioner from the American government, had, unarmed and with but two attendants, penetrated the fastnesses of the mountains, made his way to the home of the Appache Indians and to the presence of their fierce chief, Cochise. After council with the Appaches, "they had,"

as General Howard writes, "an Appache prayer-meeting, ... one Indian after another would pray or speak.... Cochise's talks were apparently the most authoritative;... I could hear him name Stagalito, meaning Red Beard. I knew from this that our whole case was being considered in their way _in the Divine Presence_ either of the G.o.d of the earth, or of His spirits; and surely these were solemn moments, ... fortunately the spirits were on our side." These words indicate very clearly the nature of that devil whom modern Indian powows wors.h.i.+p: they make him on one occasion neither more nor less than the ascended chief Stagalito, a.s.sociated with other spirits of the same nature. Can there be a doubt that Hutchinson misrepresented the fact, if he meant to call the Indian communings with spirits a wors.h.i.+ping of that monstrous being whom the word "_Devil_," uttered through clerical lips, or recorded by intelligent pens, in early colonial times, was intended and understood to describe? We think not. There was neither truth nor justice in the supposition that the red men were devil-wors.h.i.+pers at the times when they were consulting departed spirits; nor in the presumption that their mediums--their powows--were wizards.

False epithets do not convert any sincere wors.h.i.+p, performed even by the rudest of the rude, into a bad act. Those Indians of two centuries ago, as judged by us now, had truer conceptions and better knowledge of spirit intercourse with mortals, and of the fit methods of obtaining useful incentives and help from spirit realms, than had their Christian neighbors, who misunderstood and blindly maligned the devotions offered to the Great Spirit by his children in the forests. The Indians, to the best of their ability, wors.h.i.+ped Him who is the common Father of all men of every hue and condition. They sought access to the Great Spirit, our G.o.d as well as theirs, through communings with their ancestral and other spirits. But the supposition that they wors.h.i.+ped such a being as the devil of Christendom, is obviously incorrect.

Cotton Mather said that "the Indians generally acknowledged and wors.h.i.+ped _many_ G.o.dS; therefore greatly esteemed and reveres their _priests_, powows or wizards, who were esteemed as having immediate converse with the G.o.ds." Rev. Mr. Higginson, of Salem, said the Indians in that vicinity "do wors.h.i.+p two G.o.ds--a good and an evil." Mather and Higginson are better authority on this point than Hutchinson. Those denizens of the impressive forests were nature-taught spiritualists communing with their ancestral spirits, and through them were lured and helped on to wors.h.i.+p the Great Spirit of Nature--the Omnipresent G.o.d.