Note 43 — Chapter VII · FALLACIES IN POPULAR ARGUMENTS

“The idea that the northern tribes [of America] venerated one supreme and all-powerful ‘great spirit,’ by whom man and the world were created, is based on erroneous interpretation; Wakanda of the Dakotas, and Manito of the Algonquins, in no wise coming under such a designation.”43 “These terms,” writes Mr. W. J. McGee, “cannot justly be rendered into Spirit, much less into Great Spirit.”44 “Their religion,” writes another well-known ethnologist, Mr. G. Mooney, “is zootheism, or animal-worship, with the survival of a still earlier stage, which included the worship of all tangible objects, combined with the beginnings of a higher system in which the elements and the great powers of nature are deified.”45 Zootheism, the religion that has survived, does not embrace a belief in a Mightier Being, nor does this deterioration in “religion” suit the theory of a progressive revelation. We may also note that the belief of the North American in witchcraft has led to terrible slaughter, human life being sacrificed on an enormous and frightful scale.