Note 54 — LECTURE II. The Origin and Contents of Primitive Religions.

I have dwelt on the absence of monotheism among the American tribes in Myths of the New World, p. 75. Dr. Washington Matthews, a most competent, authority, expresses the universally correct view, when, speaking of Mahopa, the divine conception of the Hidatsa Indians, he says: “It refers to an influence or power above all things, but not attaching to it any ideas of personality.”—Ethnography of the Hidatsa Indians, p. 48.