of the good men, which are transported immediately after death to the apartments assigned for him in the marine palace where his godship resides. A large apartment of this place is said to be fitted up with cooking apparatus, on the most extensive scale; pots and kettles of such dimensions that walruses, sea unicorns, seals, etc., in large numbers are boiled or baked therein every day to furnish a perpetual feast for the happy spirits of deceased Esquimaux hunters, or such of them as behaved themselves with tolerable propriety while in the flesh. Hence it will appear that the Esquimaux heaven consists of a never ending feast of fat things, an eternity of well cooked walrus meat and seal’s blubber.
The devil (a female one, remember) is supposed to be an unworthy sister of the divine, Toongarsoon. She resides at some distance from her brother’s palace, on an island, where she takes charge of deceased sinners, who, under her domestic management, fare worse if possible than the inmates of some of the cheap boarding-houses in New York. In fact, these delinquent spirits suffer the pangs of starvation, and their cries and shrieks of agony are often heard above the howling of the arctic gales and the angry war of the mountain torrents. — Prof. Sountage’s Narrative, etc.
This article exemplifies the habit of non-Native writers of the past for finding Native practices remarkable if also somewhat ridiculous. “Superstitious Indians” appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, January 6, 1894. It was reprinted from the Boston Transcript. Although the writer uses the first-person singular, his name is not given.
Superstitious Indians One Reason Why Missionaries Make So Little Progress
North of the Lake of the Woods lies a region which is as yet unpenetrated by the lines of travel. In this section, perhaps, more than any other in British America, the Indians deserve the name which even the Crees about Lake Winnipeg apply to them, “Heathen Indians.” During a visit to the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg I saw some of these Indians, and our inspector of Indian agencies, the Hon. Ebenezer McColl, gave me many particulars concerning their customs.
Among these natives flourishes unabated the superstitious belief in the power of the medicine men. These artful old conjurers, more interested in extorting from the people their living than in their advancement, prejudice them against all inroads of teachers or missionaries, and by their monotonous incantations and weird ceremonies frighten them into following their advice. Into this order both men and women are initiated at any time from childhood to extreme age. A variety of rites attend upon this initiation. In one order it is the custom to demand of candidates certain sacrifices before admitting them into the sacred precincts of the medicine lodge; then food and drink are dealt out. After partaking of these they immediately retire to some secluded place, miles from the village, where fasting and sleeping, they pass from one to ten days according to their powers of endurance. During these protracted fastings the good and evil spirits visit them, showing not only the good and evil they are empowered to do in after life, but designating the object, either animate or inanimate, to which they must look for assistance.
From these visiting spirits they claim to receive instructions in the most commonplace affairs, even in the number and variety of the poles used in the constructing of the conjuring tent are designated. Those who fast the longest are the “biggest medicine,” and claim that, in the latest days of their fast, is imparted to them much more information than they received at first, their patient endurance having proved them worthy. These revelations are to be kept secret throughout life. Should they happen to be disclosed, their virtue is destroyed, and all power given is lost. When the initiates return to their lodges, each is given two swallows of a drink in a birch-bark cup, and about the same quantity of food. No more is allowed (although they are starving in sight of plenty), until a half-day has elapsed, when they are at liberty to appease their hunger. — Boston Transcript.
W.E.H. Stokes is the author of the strongly argued article “Saskatchewan’s Indians and Their Religious Beliefs,” published in the Regina Leader-Post May 30, 1906. Stokes’s name does not appear in reference books for Canadian folklore or literature. He asserts with an intensity uncommon in newspaper articles that the word pagan should not be applied to the Indians of the Northwest. He objects on the basis that the word means “heathen” — that is, a faithless person or a person who worships evil, the Devil. Yet at its core the word pagan means “rustic,” the opposite of “civic.” Still, Stokes is well ahead of his time in stating that the spiritual beliefs of the Indians should be respected and not submerged in the religious beliefs of the white man. In our day there is wide-spread interest in the survival of the principles and practices of shamanism. In the archaic period it was a global phenomenon; in our period its last-surviving remnant is undergoing a revival. It has always been characteristic of the Indians of the Northwest.
Saskatchewan’s Indians and Their Religious Beliefs
Perhaps no greater injustice was ever perpetrated by one race of people against another than when the Crees and other Indians of Saskatchewan and Alberta were officially styled “Pagans” by the Dominion Government. After having had a somewhat exceptional chance of enquiring into the obscure subject of Indian religious beliefs, I think it safe to say that the word Pagan is not in any sense applicable to these people, and I think that if the missionaries to them would first apply themselves to the study of what the Crees and the Blackfeet believe, their efforts to Christianize them would be attended with a much greater degree of success than they have achieved hitherto.
But no, with scarcely a single exception the missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, that I have met with approach the Indian they desire to convert thoroughly imbued with the idea that what the so-called Pagan believes in is such a weird, childish tissue of fancies that it is scarcely worthy of the serious attention of any sane man. The Indian’s beliefs, as I have been fortunate enough to ascertain, are as sacred, as real as ours are to us, and I have yet after fourteen years’ experience in this country to meet with the clergyman who had the least idea of what he had to combat in the minds of the Indians, or had ascertained if there was any mutual belief that he and they both held which might be used as a starting point to work from. As a rule it must be admitted that to the missionary, the Indian’s creed is Anathema Maranatha.
This may seem to you to be a rather sweeping condemnation of the methods that have been followed by Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries in this country for almost two generations, but when I reflect, and, by your leave, when you reflect upon the enormous sums of money that have been expended, upon the loss of life and health, and upon the real devotion and zeal that have been and are even now being displayed by the clergy and other workers for Christianity, it must make us sad. It must give us pause. To what results can we point? The only answer that has been given to this question is “Give us more time, more money, more workers,” but I reply, and hope to prove that I am correct, “Your efforts are misdirected, you have started wrong, and in the meantime the good you have accomplished is largely discounted by the tide of civilization which has undoubtedly undone and is pernicious to the races of Indians which you and I are so anxious to elevate.”
In what then do the aboriginals of this country believe? The following is what I found, and it cannot be more than a mere outline on account of the short time in point of years that I have devoted to this, to me, extremely interesting subject. They believe in two deities, the Great and the Small, the Great they call Manitou, which has the power for all good, and the Small Matchee-Manitou, which has the power for all evil. The possession of power being to the Indian’s mind the greatest and dearest attribute, he will, naturally apply himself to whichever of these two deities will most further his ends for blessing or cursing, but,
