As
Far As We Can Learn, The Remoter Tribes, Which Speak An Entirely
Different Language, Do Not Flatten The Head.
This absurd custom
declines, also, in receding from the shores of the Pacific; few
traces of it are to be found among the tribes of the Rocky
Mountains, and after crossing the mountains it disappears
altogether.
Those Indians, therefore, about the head waters of
the Columbia, and in the solitary mountain regions, who are often
called Flatheads, must not be supposed to be characterized by
this deformity. It is an appellation often given by the hunters
east of the mountain chain, to all western Indians, excepting the
Snakes.
The religious belief of these people was extremely limited and
confined; or rather, in all probability, their explanations were
but little understood by their visitors. They had an idea of a
benevolent and omnipotent spirit, the creator of all things. They
represent him as assuming various shapes at pleasure, but
generally that of an immense bird. He usually inhabits the sun,
but occasionally wings his way through the aerial regions, and
sees all that is doing upon earth. Should anything displease him,
he vents his wrath in terrific storms and tempests, the lightning
being the flashes of his eyes, and the thunder the clapping of
his wings. To propitiate his favor they offer to him annual
sacrifices of salmon and venison, the first fruits of their
fishing and hunting.
Besides this aerial spirit they believe in an inferior one, who
inhabits the fire, and of whom they are in perpetual dread, as,
though he possesses equally the power of good and evil, the evil
is apt to predominate.
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