151).
If with a hope of other views we turn to our magnificent national
work on the Indians (History, Conditions, and Prospects of the
Indian Tribes of the United States: Washington, 1851-9), a great
disappointment awaits us. That work was unfortunate in its editor.
It is a monument of American extravagance and superficiality. Mr.
Schoolcraft was a man of deficient education and narrow prejudices,
pompous in style, and inaccurate in statements. The information
from original observers it contains is often of real value, but the
general views on aboriginal history and religion are shallow and
untrustworthy in the extreme.
A German professor, Dr. J. G. Mueller, has written quite a
voluminous work on American Primitive Religions (_Geschichte der
Amerikanischen Ur-religionen_, pp. 707: Basel, 1855). His theory is
that "at the south a worship of nature with the adoration of the
sun as its centre, at the north a fear of spirits combined with
fetichism, made up the two fundamental divisions of the religion of
the red race" (pp.
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