Note 45.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Equivalent ideas and expressions are used by other American tribes. Supernatural power impresses the Tlingit, for example, “as a vast immensity, one in kind and impersonal, inscrutable as to its nature, but whenever manifesting itself to men, taking a personal, and it might be said a human personal, form in whatever object it displays itself. Thus the sky-spirit is the ocean of supernatural energy as it manifests itself in the sky, the sea-spirit as it manifests itself in the sea, the bear-spirit as it manifests itself in the bear, the rock-spirit as it manifests itself in the rock, etc. It is not meant that the Tlingit consciously reasons this out thus, or formulates a unity in the supernatural, but such appears to be his unexpressed feeling. For this reason there is but one name, yēk, a name which is affixed to any specific personal manifestation of it.… This supernatural energy must be carefully differentiated from natural energy and never confused with it. It is true that the former is supposed to bring about results similar to the latter, but in the mind of the Tlingit the conceived difference between these two is as great as with us. A rock rolling downhill or an animal running is by no means a manifestation of supernatural energy, although if something peculiar be associated with these actions, something outside of the Indian’s usual experience of such phenomena, they may be thought of as such.” On the other hand, and here we approach the Iroquoian idea, “the number of spirits [yēk] with which this world was peopled was simply limitless.… There is said to have been a spirit in every trail on which one travelled, and one around every fire; one was connected with everything one did.” The writer whom I am quoting goes on to give a large number of instances showing that the heavenly bodies, the wind, the sea, mountains, lakes, trees, animals, in short, all things, were addressed, to conciliate them, to render them friendly, to acquire some gift or advantage, were treated with reverence or with magical intent. And of course the medicine-men or shamans were the special favourites of the spirits, and were endowed with power which they often matched against one another.45.1