John Wesley Powell

“ Among all the tribes of North America, with which we are acquainted, tutelarism prevails. Every tribe and every clan has its own protecting god, and every individual has his "my god." It is a curious fact that every Indian seeks to conceal the knowledge of his "my god" from all other persons, for he fears that, if his enemy should know of his tutelar deity, he might by extraordinary magic succeed in estranging him, and be able to compass his destruction through his own god. ”

“ Greatly protracted life, in savagery and barbarism, is not a boon to be craved. In that stage of society where the days and the years go by with little or no provision for a time other than that which is passing, the old must go down to the grave through poverty and suffering. ”

“ In youth, activity is joy; in old age, activity is pain. No wonder, then, that old age loves youth, or that to-day loves yesterday, for the instinct is born of the inherited experiences of mankind.
But there is yet another and more potent reason for ancientism. ”

“ Gradually, in the progress of philosophy, animal-gods are dethroned and become inferior gods or are forgotten; and gradually the gods of the firmament—the sun, the moon, the stars—are advanced to supremacy: the clouds, the storms, the winds, day and night, dawn and gloaming, the sky, the earth, the sea, and all the various phases of nature perceived by the barbaric mind, are personified and deified and exalted to a supremacy coördinate with the firmament gods; and all the gods of the lower stage that remain—animals, demons, and all men—belong to inferior tribes. ”

“ Every Indian is provided with his charm or fetich, revealed to him in some awful hour of ecstasy produced by fasting, or feasting, or drunkenness, and that fetich he carries with him to bring good luck, in love or in combat, in the hunt or on the journey. He carries a fetich suspended to his neck, he ties a fetich to his bow, he buries a fetich under his tent, he places a fetich under his pillow of wild-cat skins, he prays to his fetich, he praises it, or chides it; if successful, his fetich receives the glory; if he fail, his fetich is disgraced. ”

“ Religion, in this stage of theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing, fasting, bodily torture, and ecstacism are practiced. Every tribe has its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced, and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No enterprise is undertaken without consulting the gods, and no evil impends but they seek to propitiate the gods. All daily life, to the minutest particular, is religious. ”

“ Monarchies are temporary phases of government in the evolution of mankind from barbarism to civilization; and these monarchies with their attendant hierarchies, feudalisms, and slavery, appear only as pathologic conditions of the body politic—diseases which must be destroyed or they will destroy—and hence disappearing by virtue of the survival of the fittest. Hope for the future of society is the best-beloved daughter of Evolution.
Morgan has here been spoken of as a pioneer in a special field of research, but many others worked contemporaneously with him in the same field. ”

“ Prior to its appearance, the social and governmental institutions of mankind antecedent to the evolution of civilization were to a large extent unknown. Travelers and various persons more or less familiar with tribal life had put on record many curious facts, and the compilation of these facts by scholars had resulted in the accumulation of incoherent and inconsistent materials about which more or less crude and fanciful speculations were made; but the essential characteristics of tribal society, as based upon kinship in barbarism and upon communal marriage in savagery, were unknown. ”

“ If the world's opinions were governed only by the principles of mythologic philosophy, affirmatization would become so powerful that nothing would be believed but the anciently affirmed. Men would come to know new knowledge. Society would stand still listening to the wisdom of the fathers. ”

“ The Aryan, Hamites, Shemites, and Chinese, and the rest were the weeds of humanity—the barbarian and savage, sometimes called Turanians. But, when we come carefully to study these lower people, what numbers of races are discovered! In North America alone we have more than seventy-five—seventy-five stocks of people speaking seventy-five stocks of language, and some single stocks embracing many distinct languages and dialects. ”

“ But in order to do this clearly, certain outgrowths from mythologic philosophy must be explained, certain theories and practices that necessarily result from this philosophy, and that are intricately woven into the institutions of mankind.
Ancientism—The first I denominate ancientism. Yesterday was better than to-day. The ancients were wiser than we. This belief in a better day and a better people in the elder time is almost universal among mankind. A belief so widely spread, so profoundly entertained, must have for its origin some important facts in the constitution or history of mankind. ”

“ Theistic Society.—Again, the actors in mythologic philosophy are personages, and we always find them organized in societies. The social organization of mythology is always found to be essentially identical with the social organization of the people who entertain the philosophy. The gods are husbands and wives, and parents and children, and the gods have an organized government. This gives us theistic society, and we can not properly characterize a theism without taking its mythic society into consideration. ”

“ The gods of the sky—the shining ones, those that soar on bright wings, those that are clothed in gorgeous colors, those that came from we know not where, those that vanish to the unknown—are the supreme gods. We always find these gods organized in great tribes, with mighty chieftains who fight in great combats or lead their hosts in battle, and return with much booty. ”

“ Man, impelled by his own volition, guided by his own purposes, aspires to a greater happiness, and endeavor follows endeavor, but at every step his progress is impeded: his own powers fail before the greater powers of nature; his powers are pygmies, nature's powers are giants, and to him these giants are gods with wills and purposes of their own, and he sees that man in his weakness can succeed only by allying himself with the gods. Hence, impelled by this philosophy, man must have communion with the gods, and in this communion he must influence them to work for himself. ”

“ Such are the supreme gods of the savage, and such the institutions which belong to their theism. But they have many other inferior gods. Mountains, hills, valleys, and great rocks have their own special deities—invisible spirits—and lakes, rivers, and springs are the homes of spirits. But all these have animal forms when in proper personæ. Yet some of the medicine-spirits can transform themselves, and work magic as do medicine-men. The heavenly bodies are either created personages or ancient men or animals translated to the sky. And, last, we find that ancestors are worshiped as gods. ”

“ When the romantic features of the discovery and conquest of Mexico, which made such a powerful impression upon the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which have not yet lost their influence, shall become softened down by our increasing knowledge of Indian character, arts, and institutions, it will be possible to reconstruct, from existing materials, a rational history of this interesting people. ”

“ As men come to believe that the "long ago" was better than the "now," and the dead were better than the living, then philosophy must necessarily include a theory of degeneracy, which is a part of ancientism. ”

“ Religion, that was fetichism and ecstacism and sorcery, is now the yearning for something better, something purer, and the means by which this highest state for humanity may be reached, the ideal worship of the highest monotheism, is "in spirit and in truth." ”

“ They can transform themselves; they can disappear and reappear; all their senses are magical; some are endowed with a multiplicity of eyes, others have a multiplicity of ears; in Norse mythology the watchman on the rainbow bridge could hear the grass grow and the wool on the backs of sheep; arms can stretch out to grasp the distance, tails can coil about mountains, and all powers become magical. ”

“ Each linguistic stock is found to have a philosophy of its own, and each stock as many branches of philosophy as it has languages and dialects. North America presents a magnificent field for the study of savage and barbaric philosophies. ”

“ And, still again, the institutions of society conform to its philosophy. The explanation of things always includes the origin of human institutions. So the welfare of society is based on philosophy, and the venerable sayings which constitute philosophy are thus held as sacred. So ancientism is developed from accumulated life-experiences ”

“ In the progress of human culture institutions are developed; new rights with their correlative duties arise from the new relations into which men are placed. For the maintenance of these rights and the enforcement of these duties, governments change in all their substantial characteristics, and the great laws of evolution in the processes of differentiation and integration are followed, as tribes integrate into nations and the functions of government are differentiated; communal industries change to individual and corporate industries ”

“ Spiritism.—In the earliest stages of society of which we have practical knowledge by acquaintance with the people themselves, a belief in the existence of spirits prevails—a shade, an immaterial existence, which is the duplicate of the material personage. The genesis of this belief is complex. The workings of the human mind during periods of unconsciousness lead to opinions that are enforced by many physical phenomena. ”

“ But ecstacism is produced in other ways, and for this purpose the savage and barbarian often resorts to fasting and bodily torture. In many ways he produces the wonderful state, and the visions of ecstasy are interpreted as the evidence of spirits.
Many physical phenomena serve to confirm this opinion. It is very late in philosophy when shadows are referred to the interception of the rays of the sun. In savagery and barbarism shadows are supposed to be emanations from or duplicates of the bodies causing the shadows. ”

“ Perhaps the myths of the Numas have been collected more thoroughly than those of any other stock. These are yet unpublished. Powers has recorded many of the myths of various stocks in California, and the old Spanish writings give us a fair collection of the Nahuatl myths of Mexico, and Rink has presented us an interesting volume on the mythology of the Innuits; and, finally, fragments of mythology have been collected from nearly all the tribes of North America, and they are scattered through thousands of volumes, so that the literature is vast. ”

“ All of the wonderful things seen in nature are done by the animal-gods. That elder life was a magic life; but the descendants of the gods are degenerate. Now and then as a medicine-man by practicing sorcery can perform great feats, so now and then there is a medicine-bear, a medicine-wolf, or a medicine-snake that can work magic. ”

“ The bad gods are banished to underground homes, or live in concealment, from which they issue on their expeditions of evil. Still, all powers exist in these gods, and all things were established by them. With the growth of their moral qualities no physical powers are lost, and the spirits of the physical bodies and phenomena become demons, subordinate to the great gods who preside over nature and human institutions. ”

“ But the most wonderful power with which the gods are endowed is the power of will, for we find that they can think their arrows to the hearts of their enemies; mountains are overthrown by thought, and thoughts are projected into other minds. Such are the thaumaturgics of mythologic philosophy. ”

“ The same conditions of apparent severance of mind and body witnessed in dreams and hallucinations are often produced artificially in the practice of ecstacism. In the vicissitudes of savage life, while little or no provision is made for the future, there are times when the savage resorts to almost anything at hand as a means of subsistence, and thus all plants and all parts of plants, seed, fruit, flowers, leaves, bark, roots—anything in times of extreme want—may be used as food. ”

“ In every society some are wise and some are foolish, and the wise are revered, and their affirmations are accepted. Thus, the few lead the multitude in knowledge, and the propensity to believe the affirmed started in childhood is increased in manhood in the great average of persons constituting society, and these propensities are inherited from generation to generation, until we have a cumulation of effects. ”

“ There were many other clans and tribes of ancient gods with whom these supreme gods had dealings, of which hereafter; and, finally, each of these ancient gods became the progenitor of a new tribe, so that we have a tribe of bears, a tribe of eagles, a tribe of rattlesnakes, a tribe of spiders, and many other tribes, as we have tribes of Utes, tribes of Sioux, tribes of Navajos: and in that philosophy tribes of animals are considered to be coördinate with tribes of men. All of these gods have invisible duplicates—spirits—and they have often visited the earth. ”

“ Thus the dreams of sleepers are attributed to their immaterial duplicates—their spirits. In many diseases, also, the mind seems to wander, to see sights, and to hear sounds, and to have many wonderful experiences, while the body itself is apparently unconscious. ”

“ No harm will be done to truth, if the great lords, with many vassals and large landed estates, and the little lords, with few vassals and small landed estates, are introduced as plain Indian chiefs, innocent of all knowledge both of estates and vassals. ”