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remarks, Without a fundamental knowledge of those languages which can still be successfully studied, all other anthropologic peculiarities of the tribes speaking them will be imperfectly understood.'

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The second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for 1880-1881, published at Washington in 1883, contains, besides Mr. Powell's report, the following papers: Frank H. Cushing, Zuñi Fetiches'; Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith, Myths of the Iroquois '; Henry W. Henshaw, Animal Carvings from the Mounds of Mississippi Valley'; Dr. Washington Matthews, Navajo Silversmiths'; W. H. Holmes, 'Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans'; James Stevenson, Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections obtained from the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona in 1879 and 1880.'

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I have since received two more volumes, each full of valuable information. The Report for 1881 to 1882, published in 1884, contains, among other papers, one by Mr. Cyrus Thomas, On certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts,' another by Mr. J. Owen Dorsey, 'On Omaha Sociology,' and another by Dr. Washington Matthews, 'On Navajo Weavers.' The Report for 1882-1883, published in 1886, gives us an essay by Mr. Garrick Mallery, 'On Pictographs of the NorthAmerican Indians,' and several papers on ceramic art by Mr. W. H. Holmes and Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing.

Works of this kind are of the greatest importance for the study of anthropology, and particularly for that branch of it which we call mythology. I know that in trying to encourage the study of the languages, the customs, and the religions of uncivilised

races, we may sometimes incur the suspicion of unduly exaggerating the importance of the results likely to be obtained from such researches ; nor can it be denied that researches of this kind may often lead only to an accumulation of curious facts which, unless they can be interpreted by themselves or used to interpret other facts, are considered by the public at large as mere rubbish. If properly sifted and classified, however, such rubbish has yielded already the most valuable grains of gold, and those who doubt it have only to read that one truly classical work, Anthropologie der Naturvölker by Waitz, in order to see how much may be learnt from what that great scholar rightly calls, not 'Savages,' but 'the People of Nature.'

The True Meaning of Manito.

The mythology and religion of these People of Nature require, however, the same critical treatment which is demanded for the study of Greek and Roman Mythology. There is a difference between being pedantic and being honest. It is pedantic to exact from a writer on North American religions the same familiarity with the languages of the Mohawks which Gottfried Hermann possessed with Greek, or the same critical accuracy in their treatment of the religion. and philosophy of these nomadic races which Munro brought to the study of Lucretius. Nor should we forget that a critical study of languages and religions has been making such rapid progress of late and has assumed such large proportions, that a writer on anthropology is not at once to be set down. as ignorant or dishonest, because he writes in ignorance of the most recent essay published, it may be, in

the Transactions of some local society. What is dishonest, or, at all events, unscholarlike, is to write dogmatically on any subject of which we have not made a special study, and at the same time wilfully to ignore or even to ridicule the work which specialists have devoted to it.

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It is not fair, for instance, to blame writers on anthropology if they have hitherto ascribed to the North-American Indians, as is generally done, a kind of primitive monotheism. The Great Manito "' has been so often represented by men who had long been living among the Red-Indians as the Supreme Spirit, in all but his name identified with Jehovah, that it required some courage to question this view. Some of the earliest missionaries, such as Roger Williams, had pointed out that Manito was rather a pantheistic than a monotheistic concept, and Lahontaine had remarked long ago that it was applied to all that surpasses their understanding and proceeds from a cause that they cannot trace 2. It was reserved, however, to those scholars who of late have studied the languages of America with the same analytical acumen which has given us our grammars of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, to bring out clearly the original intention of the Great Manito. Manito, they tell us, means simply the

1 I see it stated by Mr. E. Farrer (Mail, Toronto) that Kitchi-Manito, which is generally translated by the Great Spirit,' is a mere mistake, and that the true form is Gitse-Manito, which means 'the Spirit of the Day.' Gijig is the day, the light, the shining. Hence gigieb, the morning. The root is giji, to warm, to heat, to cook, to ripen, and from it gitsis or kezis, the sun, as well as gitse, the day. The moon is called tibi-gitsis, the night-sun, or the night-shine, and gitsiis is the month. How many analogies are here supplied with Sanskrit words!

2 M. M., Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 195.

Beyond1, and was in fact one of the many names which we find among nations where we should least expect it, as the first vague expression of the Infinite 2. Scholarship only could have established this fact, and while not blaming anthropologists for not having discovered what was really outside their domain, one may at the same time remind them that they ought to appreciate more highly the services which scholarship, and scholarship alone, can render to their studies.

It is curious to observe in how many different ways this word Manito has been translated, as spirit, demon, god, devil, mystery, magic, and even medicine 3. The etymological or original meaning of Manito, as explained by Trumbull, has been discussed in my 'Lectures on the Science of Religion,' p. 193. Another word for Manito in Algonkin is oki, in Iroquois oki and otkon, in Dakota wakan, in Aztec teotl, in Quichua huaca, and in Maya ku. They all express, as Brinton says, the idea of the supernatural in its most general form, as that which is above the natural. Wakan as an adverb means above, oki is the same as oghee, and otkon seems allied to hetken, all having the same signification. Whether all these words have a common origin must as yet remain doubtful, but it deserves at least to be pointed out, how closely they resemble each other, ku in Maya, kue-ya in Natchez, kauhuu in the Uchee of West Florida, okha in Otomi, okee in Mandan, ogha, waughon, wakan in Sioux, waka and huaca in Quichua, quaker 4 and oki in Iroquois, oki in Algonkin,

1 M. M., 1. c., p. 196.

2 M. M., Hibbert Lectures, p. 55, Mana, a Melanesian name for the Infinite.

3 Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 45.

4 Gallatin (Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. ii.) is

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vaghalt in Eskimo, being all intended to express that which is above, the sky, and what is above the sky. The Indians themselves find it difficult to explain what they mean by this word. The Hurons, from whom possibly the Iroquois borrowed the word, declared that they meant by it a demoniac power that rules the seasons of the year, that holds the winds and the waves in leash, that can give fortune to their undertakings, and relieve all their wants.' The Aztecs and Quiches attempted to express more fully what they mean, by using at the same time such phrases as Head of the Sky,' 'Lord of the Sky,' 'Prince of the Azure Planisphere,'' the Above All,' 'the Soul of the Sky.'

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It was through the Missionaries, however, that Manito and the other names for the Beyond were for the first time taken as names of the Good Spirit, in the Christian sense of the word; and it is stated positively in the 'Jesuit Relations' that there was no one immaterial god, recognised by the Algonkin tribes, when first brought into contact with Europeans, and that the title, the Great Manito, was introduced first by themselves in its personal sense1, while the name of the Supreme Iroquois deity, triumphantly adduced by many writers to show the monotheism underlying the native creeds, viz. Neo or Hawaneu, is strongly suspected of being nothing but an Indian corruption of the French Dieu and le bon Dieu 2.

led to suppose that the Eastern tribes derived their first notions of a Supreme Being from the Quakers; Brinton, p. 48, note.

1 Relations de la Nouvelle France, pour l'an 1637, p. 49; Brinton, 1.c., p. 53.

2 Études Philologiques sur quelques langues sauvages de l'Amerique, p. 14, Montreal, 1866; Brinton, 1. c., p. 53. Mr. Garrick Mallery, in his paper on the Pictographs of the North-American Indians (Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1882-83, p. 191), says: The statement that the

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