nonsense; and, in fact, prejudices appear doubly absurd when we do not possess the key to them. We have ended by believing that there is no intelligence but our own, no morality that does not fit in with our formulas. But who are we that we should take up such a lofty position with regard to the intellectual and moral weakness of those who preceded us? There is a lesson to be learnt, if we take the pains to look for it, in these errors through which the human race has passed, these illusions which it has left behind. They are no mere anomalies or sports of chance launched forth into empty space; they have been produced by natural causes, in natural, and we may say, logical order. The whole * * series of superstitions is but the search for truth amidst ignorance," A common error regarding savages is that they have lived, or still live, in a state of chronic war and bloodshed, either with their neighbours or among themselves; a moment's consideration should suffice to show the fallacy of this view, for besides the very considerable amount of time required to provide food and the material for clothing, many, many days and weeks of patient labour were spent in flaking flints, chipping and polishing celts, boring holes in implements of various kinds, and in fashioning what, to us, are mysterious objects, so far as their use is concerned. Misconception of this kind is likely to arise from the perusal of "penny dreadfuls," and even from books of professedly higher aim, where the savage is never introduced without a diabolical grin on his countenance, a war-club in his blood-stained hand," and "his dishevelled locks matted with the gore of his innocent victims." Prince Kropotkin* on this point remarks, "At no period of man's life were wars the normal state of existence. While warriors exterminated each other and the priests celebrated their massacres, the masses continued to live their daily life, they prosecuted their daily toil. And it is one of the most interesting of studies to follow that life of the masses; to study the means by which they maintained their own social organisation, which was based upon their own conceptions of equity, mutual aid, and mutual support of common law, in a word, even when they were submitted to the most ferocious theocracy or autocracy in the state." The myths and superstitions of primitive folk, their social organization, their germs of constitutional government, their daily occupations, their forms, ceremonies, games and amusements, the mechanical methods and devices they employed, and the examples of their handicraft-all these must ever possess an increasing interest to thoughtful persons generally, but more especially to those whose desire it is to study civilisation "in its wide ethnographic sense as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." "Even when it comes to comparing barbarous hordes with civilised nations, the consideration thrusts itself on our minds, how far item after item of the life of the lower races passes into analogous proceedings of the higher, in forms not too far changed to be recognised, and sometimes hardly changed at all. Look at the modern European peasant using his hatchet and his hoe, see his food boiling or roasting over the log fire, observe the exact place which beer holds in his calculation of happiness, hear his tale of the ghost in the nearest haunted house, and of the farmer's niece who was bewitched with knots in her inside till she fell into fits and died. If we choose out in this way things which have altered little in a long course of centuries, we may draw a picture where there shall scarce be a hand's breadth difference between an English ploughman and a negro of Central Africa." + *"Mutual Aid Among Savages," Nineteenth Century, April, 1891, p. 559. Except, perhaps, in the matter of house accommodation, it might not be difficult to prove that the every-day life of the old American savage was superior to that of peasants in some civilised communities to-day. This, not so much to the credit of the Indian, as to show that modern society in at least a few of its phases, has not made all the advance it was capable of making, or that we have a right to suppose it should have done. In the region of the aesthetic, the Indian, even of this northern latitude, occupied an immensely higher plane than the class just mentioned. He understood the effect of colour, and employed it to some purpose, both in personal decoration and on articles of manufacture; his sense of the elegant in form is well illustrated in the graceful outline given to many of his coarse clay vessels, his pipes of stone and clay, and in the great variety of beautifully fashioned objects which are known to us, for the want of a more definite name, as ceremonial " weapons. In the adornment, too, of his clay pipes and pots he attempted to please the eye by means of depressed lines, dots and circles, to form patterns, some of which are both regular and complicated. Morally, his code may not have been a very high one, but religiously, he may fairly be placed among the first of animists. To him, everything visible and tangible was the abode of a spirit. When he dreamt of anything he must obtain it, lest his spirit should forsake his body to fraternise with the spirit of what appeared to him in his sleep; or his dream was a visit paid to him from the soul of the subject of hisd ream. According to Morgant the Iroquois used to make a hole in the grave to facilitate the passage of the soul from and to the body, and more recently it was customary to bore one or more holes in the coffin for a similar purpose. Sagard informs us that the soul of the dog, went to serve the soul of his owner in the Spirit-land.† Of nothing concerning the Indians are we more certain then of his pan-spiritism-all the early writers referred to this belief. Not only were natural objects thus regarded, for weapons, tools, ornaments, warpaint and all other objects, partly or wholly manufactured, were similarly possessed. Hence the custom of placing those articles in graves. "That the purpose of such offerings is the transmission of the objects' spirit or phantom to the possession of the man's, is explicitly stated as early as 1623 by Father Lallemant: when the Indians buried kettles, furs, etc., with the dead, they said that the bodies of the things remained, but their souls went to the dead who used them. The whole idea is graphically illustrated in the following Ojibwa tradition or myth. "Gitchi Gauzini was a chief who lived on the shores of Lake Superior, and once, after a few days' illness he seemed to die. He had been a skilful hunter, and had drsired that, a fine gun which he possessed should be buried with him when he died. But some of his friends not thinking him really dead, his body was not buried; his widow watched him for four days, he came back to life, and told his story. After death, he said, his ghost travelled on the broad road of the dead toward the happy land, passing over great plains of luxuriant herbage, seeing beautiful groves, and hearing the songs of innumerable birds, till at last, from the summit of a hill, he caught sight of the distant city of the dead, far across an intermediate space, partly veiled in mist, and spangled with glittering lakes and streams. He came in view of herds of stately deer, and moose, and other game, which with little fear walked near his path. But he had no gun, and remembering how he had requested his friends to put his gun in his Nouvelle France, Charlevoix, vol. vi., p. 78. + Iroquois-Morgan, p. 176. was paid. The date when the said limit was first placed under license, and the persons to whom the license was issued. Copies of all transfers of the said berth, or of any interest therein and copies of all correspondence, memoranda, rulings of the Commissioner of Crown Lands, or any other officer of his Department with reference to the said berth. And also, copies of all reports made to the said Department by any wood ranger or other officer of the Department as to the quantity of timber in the said berth. Presented to the Legislature 12th April, 1892. Mr. Marter. (Not printed.) No. 98.. Return to an Order of the House, of the twenty-sixth day of February, 1890, for a Return of copies of all Departmental orders or correspondence with reference to the appointment of A. F. Dulmage as an officer of the Crown Lands Department. Also, copies of all correspondence between the Crown Lands Department or any officer thereof, including the Commissioner of Crown Lands, and the said Dulmage, (including all letters of instruction sent to him) since his appointment; also copies of all accounts furnished by him to the said Department. A full statement of all moneys received or collected by the said Dulmage, showing the dates when the same were received or collected, and on what account and from whom. A like statement of the moneys paid over by him to the said Department, and of the moneys misappropriated by him, or for which he did not account. Also, copies of all correspondence relating to his defalcation, between any member or officer of the Government and the said Dulinage or any other person, and of all reports in reference thereto, and a statement of the amounts paid to or received by the said Dulmage for salary or expenses in each year since his employment began. Presented to the Legislature 12th April, 1892. Mr. Marter. (Not printed.) No. 99.. Return showing the indebtedness of Municipalities to the Government on the 1st January, 1892. Presented to the Legislature 12th April, 1892. (Not printed.) grave, he turned back to go and feteh it. Then he met face to face the train of men, women, and children who were travelling toward the city of the dead. They were heavily laden with guns, pipes, kettles, meats, and other articles; women were carrying basket-work and painted paddles, and little boys had their ornamented clubs, and their bows and arrows, the presents of their friends. Refusing a gun which an overburdened traveller offered him, the ghost of Gitchi Gauzini travelled back in quest of his own, and at last reached the place where he had died. There he could see only a great fire before him and around him, and finding the flames barring his passage on every side, he made a desperate leap through, and awoke from his trance. Having concluded his story he gave his auditors counsel that they should no longer deposit so many burdensome things with the dead, delaying them on their journey to the place of repose, so that almost every one he met complained bitterly. It would be wiser, he said, only to put such things in the grave as the deceased was particulary attached to, or made a formal request to have deposited with him."* Perhaps it is in some degree owing to this belief in universal spirit possession that our northern Indians so seldom ventured to fashion anything immodest, or even suggestive. That it was not for the want of mechanical ability we know— the multiplicity of designs in clay, stone and bone sufficiently attest this, but whatever the reason may have been the almost entire absence of such objects is a noteworthy fact, when, taken in connection with the early records relating to all the tribes in this part of America. Among North American Indians, perhaps the Cherokees deserved least credit for their good taste in this respect, but even they compare favorably with the peoples of South America. While many specimens, (especially flaked ones) found in different parts of the province, may be classified as palæoliths, they have, up to the present time always been found associated in such a way with neoliths that it is impossible to designate them as paleoliths with any degree of certainty. Leafshaped "flints" have been picked up that are quite as rudely formed as any from the deepest stalagmite deposits of Europe, but never in situations to suggest that they are other than rough-hewn tools or weapons, which, as such, had a purpose in the economy of people who were capable of producing better things. Until we find specimens of this kind, as Dr. Abbott found them in the Trenton gravels, or in some situation isolated from all others, or distinct as to material or coating from specimens of a superior quality in the same neighborhood, we shall not be warranted in making any distinction relative to time of possible production. Those that approach most nearly to satisfying some of those conditions, and now in the museum, were found on the farm of Mr. Seabrook, near Komoka in Delaware township. Nearly seventy were found in a "nest" only a few inches below the surface. In appearance they bear every mark of being much older than other specimens found in the same district, but unfortunately among the lot as forwarded to us was an arrow-head of decidedly more recent type, and Mr. Seabrook asserts that it was found along with the rest. A further reference to these, with two cuts, may be found in the Archæological Report for 1886-7 p. 45. *Primitive Culture, Tylor, vol. 1, pp. 434, 435. |