Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1890 — AN INTERESTING PAPER. [ARTICLE]

AN INTERESTING PAPER.

A Scientific. Contribution that Will Create a Stir in Geological Circles. Colonel Garrick Maliery. of the Smithsonian Institution, who is recognized as an authority on Indian traditions, religions and languages, has just completed a contribution to science that is likely to cause-considerable stir in the geological circles. It is called “Israelite and Indian; a Parallel in Planes of Culture,” and was written for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he is the vice president and chief of the anthropological section. In this leport Co’onel Malfery overthrows amt completely demolishes a popular and al- ; most universal theory that all the savage tribes of Amtr ca, before their contact with civilization, had a formulated and established religious faith, believed in a single Supreme Being, a future life and a system of rewards and punishments after death. This theory, which has been accepted and disseminated by religious missionaries of all denominations among the Indians, his been the chief link to connect them with the prehistoric races of the Mosiac era, aud at the same time has been used to demonstrate that m in*, as a creature, however ignorant or degraded, was divinely inspired with a revelation or an instinct that recognized the one Supreme Being, the immortality of the soul ; and hope of happiness or fear of misery after death, accordingly as hi 3 early liie was spent. Colonel Maliery reports that after years of investigation into the traditions of all the North American tribes, representing fifty-eight linguistic stocks and more than 300 languages, he has been forced to the conclusion that the aborigines had no such instinct and no such religious belief until after contact with European civilization, when they gained it from the missionaries. These missionaries, he saya, were imbued with the dogma, and sought, and therefore found evidence of one primeval faith, hut were misled by their own enthusiasm. He continues*. “Afteif careful examination, with the assistance of explorers and linguists, I reassert my statement that no tribe or body of Indians before missionary influence entertaiued any formulated or distinct belief in a single overruling ‘Great Spirit,’ or aDy being that corresponded to the Christian conception of God. But I freely with even greater emph isis, that an astounding number of customs of the North American Indians are the same as those recorded of the ancient Israelites.” He tells, too, of the experience of W. W. Warren, who translated Bible history for the Ojibway nation, and was invariably met with the remark from the native piiests: “This book must be true, for our ancestors have told us similar stories, generation after generation, since the world was new," and only last year, when a well-informed chief of the Muskokis was being questioned as to the religious myths und legends of his tribes, he replied: “They are all in the Old Testament. We can read them the e without the trouble of taking them down from our people. ” Colonel Maliery also argues that it is useless to attempt to Christianize the ludians until after tuey have been civilized.