But concerning American religions I need not have recourse to such a
questionable vindication. They held in them far nobler elements, as is
proved beyond cavil by the words of many of the earliest missionaries
themselves. Bigoted and bitter haters of the native faiths, as they were,
they discovered in them so much that was good, so much that approximated
to the purer doctrines that they themselves came to teach, that they have
left on record many an attempt to prove that there must, in some remote
and unknown epoch, have come Christian teachers to the New World, St.
Thomas, St. Bartholomew, monks from Ireland, or Asiatic disciples, to
acquaint the natives with such salutary doctrines. It is precisely in
connection with the myths which I have been relating in this volume that
these theories were put forth, and I have referred to them in various
passages.
The facts are as stated, but the credit of developing these elevated moral
conceptions must not be refused to the red race. They are its own
property, the legitimate growth of its own religious sense.
The hero-god, the embodiment of the Light of Day, is essentially a moral
and beneficent creation. Whether his name be Michabo, Ioskeha, or
Quetzalcoatl, Itzamna, Viracocha or Tamu, he is always the giver of laws,
the instructor in the arts of social life, the founder of commonwealths,
the patron of agriculture.
Pages:
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273