Logo

Synopsis The following work is an attempt to describe, in brief compass, the religion and the religious experience of aboriginal peoples. While concrete facts have, I hope, never been neglected, they have been made subsidiary to my main purpose, that of presenting the religions encountered in simple societies, in such manner that the reader will be in a position to understand the individuals and the forces that have been at work in fashioning the basic expression which religion has there assumed. I have throughout sought to interpret religion I terms of human personalities and not in terms of human personalities and not in terms of generalized men and women who are made to serve as a kind of academic cement for vague ideas and still spite of my nest endeavours, I have derived little help from the works of those of my predecessors who insisted upon emphasizing what they termed the psychological side of religion. These scholars, I cannot but feel, have been playing what might be called a form of intellectual golf, using conceptual pellets to which they have given such names as supernatural power, aweinspiring, mystical thrill; a game, moreover, that seems to have been played in an ideological heaven where, at the end of each day, they find themselves effectively and decisively bunkered. Their method has led to the tre4atment of religion as if it were completely divorced both from life and from the vicissitudes of the economic order in which each religion is so intimately embedded, and it has contributed, in no small degree, toward making the study of religion an artificial and subjective contemplation of verbalized facts and hypostasized events. I naturally do not remember all of them or the extent to which I have borrowed or even plagiarized from them, but to forestall any claims of undue originally that may be falsely attributed to me, I hereby humbly and sincerely acknowledge their inspiration, large and small, and surrender all rights to priority. To one source of inspiration, however, I do wish to acknowledge a deep and abiding debt of gratitude, to the Winnebago Indian, who enabled me to obtain an accurate and complete account of their religion and whose influence has been paramount in shaping my notions of aboriginal religions.