might have become aware in course of time, if the intervention of Old-World ideas had not confused them.
A number of distinctions are the necessary introduction to any study of Indian myth. In the first place, in America, no more than in the Old World, are we to identify religion with mythology. The two are intimately related; every mythology is in some degree an effort to define a religion; and yet there is no profound parallelism between god and hero, no immutable relation between religious ceremony and mythic tale, even when the tale be told to explain the ceremony. No illustration could be better than is afforded by the fact that the greatest of Indian mythic heroes, the Trickster-Transformer, now Hare, now Coyote, now Raven, is nowhere important in ritual; while the powers which evoke the Indian s deepest veneration, Father Sky and Mother Earth, are of rare appearance in the tales.
The Indian s religion must be studied in his rites rather than in his myths; and it may be worth while here to designate the most significant and general of these rites. Foremost is the calumet ceremony, in which smoke-offering is made to the sky, the earth, and the rulers of earth s quarters, constituting a kind of ritualistic definition of the Indian's cosmos. Hardly second to this is the rite of the sweat-bath, which is not merely a means of healing disease, but a prayer for strength and purification addressed to the elements earth, fire, water, air, in which resides the life-giving power of the universe. Third in order are ceremonies, such as fasting and vigil, for the purpose of inducing visions that shall direct the way of life; for among the Indian s deepest convictions is his belief that the whole environment of physical life is one of strength-imbuing powers only thinly veiled from sight and touch. Shamanistic or mediumistic rites, resting upon belief in the power of unseen beings to possess and inspire the mortal body, form a fourth group of ceremonies. A fifth is composed of the great communal ceremonies, commonly called "dances" by white men.
