believe that, when they die, they goe into the stars, and thence by little and little descend down into the horizon, even as the stars doe: and that then they goe into certain greene fields full of goodly, fair, and precious trees, flowers, and fruits."* And the early Franciscan missionary Sagard, who resided among the Hurons, says of them:-"They believe in the immortality of the soul, and that when it leaves the body, it goes rejoicing along the road of the stars, (the milky way,) which they call the path of souls." +

The Indians, according to Hunter, have no fixed days set apart for devotional purposes, but offer up their joint prayers upon particular occasions, such as the declaration of war, the restoration of peace, and upon extraordinary natural visitations. They have also rejoicings which assume a pious form, as the time of harvest, the return of the new moon, &c. "In general, however," says he, "a day seldom passes with an elderly Indian, or others who are esteemed wise and good, in which a blessing is not asked, or thanks returned to the Giver of Life; sometimes audibly, but more generally in the devotional language of the heart."

Was it therefore to be wondered at that numerous

• Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii. p. 223.

+ Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, par Frère Sagard, ch. 18. Paris, 1632.

Hunter's Memoirs, ch. 6.

tribes, entertaining such views of religion, and carrying into practice its simple but sincere precepts, as handed down to them from their ancestors, should have been perplexed by the modes in which new religious doctrines were attempted to be taught to them by the Europeans? Little or no inquiry was made as to their existing notions of natural religion, or of the worship of a Deity. However much the early missionaries of the Romish and the Reformed Churches disputed about the right road by which the Indian was to be sent to heaven, they cordially joined in the cry of "infidel salvage," "impious heathen," &c. &c., unanimously pronouncing him—for the present at least—to be under the sole and exclusive dominion of the devil. "These parts," says the Rev. Dr. Mather, "were then covered with nations of barbarous Indians and Infidels, in whom the prince of the power of the air did work as a spirit; nor could it be expected that nations of wretches, whose whole religion was the most explicit sort of devil-worship, should not be acted by the devil to engage in some early and bloody action for the extinction of a plantation so contrary to his interests as that of New England was. Again: "Satan," writes the superiorgeneral of all the Jesuit Canadian missions to the head of his order in France, "Satan has made

* Mather's Magnalia, book vii. ch. 6.

every effort to recover the ground which Jesus Christ had gained from him, and to maintain possession of a country where he had reigned peaceably for so many ages.

By Roman Catholic and Protestant the Indian was called upon, with frightful denunciations, to relinquish the worship of the Great Spirit, as taught him by his forefathers, and to adopt in its place the religion of the Whites. But what did the shrewd Indian perceive in these his new religious instructors, that was calculated to incline him to listen to their exhortations? Their morality he could not respect, and their conduct towards his countrymen had never been such as to merit his confidence and esteem. Besides, what was he to think of the differences and distinctions which appeared to exist among the Europeans themselves on the subject of the religious doctrines which they inculcated? "The different methods," says Hennepin, "that are used for the instruction of the Indians retard much their conversion. One begins by the animal part, another by the spiritual. There are diversity of beliefs among the Christians; every one believes his own faith to be the purest, and his own method the best there ought therefore to be a uniformity in belief and method, as there is but one Truth

* Relation de la Nouvelle France, 1643-44, par le Père Vimont, ch. 8.

and one Redeemer; otherwise these barbarians
I will not know what to resolve
""*
upon. If, how-
ever, the account given by Dr. Mather of the colony
of Rhode Island be correct, its red aborigines must
have been somewhat bewildered with the variety
even of Protestant sectaries who had planted them-
selves among them: "It has been," says the
Doctor, "a colluvies of Antinomians, Familists,
Anabaptists, Antisabbatarians, Arminians, Soci-
nians, Quakers, Ranters-every thing in the world
but Roman Catholics and real Christians, (though
of the latter I hope there have been more than the
former among them,) so that if a man had lost his
religion, he might find it at that general muster of
Opinionists." But, intolerant as was Dr. Ma-
ther in his prose, Governor Dudley, of the same
colony, was no less so in his poetry. When the
governor died, there was found in his pocket a
copy of verses of his own composing, the concluding
lines of which shew that to the last gasp his Excel-
lency denounced all freedom of opinion and liberty
of conscience :

Farewell, Dear Wife, Children, and Friends,
Hate Heresie; make Blessed Ends:

Let Men of God in Courts and Churches watch,
O'er such as do a Toleration hatch,

* Hennepin, ii. ch. 30.

+ Mather's Magnalia, book vii. ch. 3.

Lest that Ill Egg bring forth a Cockatrice
To poison all with Heresie and Vice.
If Men be left, and otherwise Combine,
My Epitaph's-E Dy'd no Libertine.*

But the religious differences which had the most baneful effect in some parts of the Indian countries, were those which existed between the missions of the Roman Catholic and of the Reformed persuasion. These missions had pushed their way into various parts of the interior, and, in their rivalship, seemed often disposed to imbibe that rancorous spirit of which their respective governments too frequently set them the example. At one time it was made a capital offence for a Protestant to settle in New France; and in New England they retaliated by enacting a law in Massachussets, that if a Roman Catholic priest found his way into the colony, (after having been once turned out of it,) he should be hanged. Père Charlevoix himself is far from being exempt from this spirit of intolerance. In noticing the country of the Iroquois, he observes, "As I had the happiness of being intimate with most of those missionaries who laboured in that vineyard, which, notwithstanding their care, has remained an unproductive soil, I frequently inquired of them what had prevented the seed from taking root among a people whose good sense and generous

Mather's Magnalia, book ii. ch. 5.