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AN INDIAN'S RELIGION.

The Indian is as religious as the most devout Christian, and lays as much stress of form as a Ritualist. He believes in two Gods, equals in wisdom and power.

One is the Good God. His function is to aid the Indian in all his undertakings, to heap benefits upon him, to deliver his enemy into his hands, to protect his from danger, pain, privation. He directs the successful bullet, whether against an enemy against the "beasts of the field." He provides all the good and pleasurable things in life. Warmth, food, joy, success in love, distiction in war, all come from him.

The other is the Bad God. He is always the enemy of each individual red man, and exerts to the utmost all his powers of harm against him. From him proceed all the disasters, misfortunes, privations, and discomforts of life. All pain, suffering, cold, disease, the deadly bullet, defeat, wounds, and death.

The action of these two Gods is not in any way influenced by questions of abstract right or morality as we understand them.

The Good God assists in everything he wishes or proposes to do. If it is to steal a horse or the wife of a friend, to kill another Indian or raid a settlement, it is to the Good God to whom he turns for countenance, and by his assistance accomplishes his purpose.

Every thwarted thought or desire is attributed to the influence of the Bad God.

He belives not an hour passes without a struggle between these two Gods on his personal account.

The Indian firmly believes in immortality, and life after death, but the power of these Gods does not extend to it. They influence only in this life, and the Indian's condition after death does not depend either on his own conduct while living, or on the will of either of the Gods.

All peccadilloes and crimes bring, or do not bring, their punishment in this world, and, whatever their character in life, the souls of all Indians reach, unless debarred by accident, a paradise called by them "Happy Hunting Grounds."

There are two ways in which an Indian's soul can be prevented from reaching this paradise. One method is by strangulation. The Indian believes the soul escapes from the body by the mouth, which opens of itself at the moment of dissolution to allow a free passage. In case of strangulation, either by deisign or even accident, the soul can never escape, but remains with or hovering near the remains, even after complete decomposition.

As the soul is always conscious of its isolation and its exclusion from the joys of paradise, this death has perculiar terros, and