A Brief Guide to Native American Myths and Legends Read Online Free PDF

native classification can be truthfully shown to be erroneous it would seem to be advisable to designate them by distinctive names. Notwithstanding the great amount of study of the literature of the social features of aboriginal American society, there are many data relative to this subject that have been overlooked or disregarded.’
Fetishism
    Side by side with animism and totemism flourishes a third type of primitive belief, known as ‘fetishism’. This word is derived from the Portuguese
feitiço
, ‘a charm’, ‘something made by art’, and is applied to any object, large or small, natural or artificial, regarded as possessing consciousness, volition, and supernatural qualities, and especially
orenda
, or magic power.
    As has been said, the Indian intelligence regards all things, animals, water, the earth, trees, stones, the heavenly bodies, even night and day, and such properties as light and darkness, as possessing animation and the power of volition. It is, however, the general Indian belief that many of these are under some spell or potent enchantment. The rocks and trees are confidently believed by the Indian to be the living tombs of imprisoned spirits, resembling the dryads of Greek folklore,so that it is not difficult for him to conceive an intelligence, more or less potent, in any object, no matter how uncommon – indeed, the more uncommon the greater the probability of its being the abode of some powerful intelligence, incarcerated for revenge or some similar motive by the spell of a mighty enchanter.
    The fetish is, in short, a mascot – a luck-bringer. The civilized person who attaches a swastika or small charm to his watch-chain or her bangle is unconsciously following in the footsteps of many pagan ancestors; but with this difference, that the idea that ‘luck’ resides in the trinket is weak in the civilized mind, whereas in the savage belief the ‘luck’ resident in the fetish is a powerful and living thing – an intelligence which must be placated with prayer, feast, and sacrifice. Fetishes which lose their reputations as bringers of good-fortune usually degenerate into mere amulets or talismanic ornaments, and their places are taken by others. The fetish differs from the class of tutelary or ‘household’ gods in that it may be sold or bartered, whereas tutelary or domestic deities are never to be purchased, or even loaned.
Fetish objects
    Nearly all the belongings of a
shaman
, or medicine-man, are classed as fetishes by the North American Indians. These usually consist of the skins of beasts, birds, and serpents, roots, bark, powder, and numberless other objects. But the fetish must be altogether divorced from the idea of religion proper, with which it has little or no connection, being found side by side with religious phases of many types. The fetish may be a bone, a feather, an arrow-head, a stick, carved or painted, a fossil, a tuft of hair, a necklace of fingers, a stuffed skin, the hand of an enemy, anything which might be suggested to the original possessor in a dream or a flight of imagination. It is sometimes fastened to the scalp-lock, to the dress, to the bridle, concealed between the layers of a shield, or specially deposited in a shrine in the wigwam. The idea inthe mind of the original maker is usually symbolic, and is revealed only to one formally chosen as heir to the magical possession, and pledged in his turn to a similar secrecy.
    Notwithstanding that the cult of fetishism is not, strictly speaking, a department of religious activity, a point exists at which the fetish begins to evolve into a god. This happens when the object survives the test of experience and achieves a more than personal or tribal popularity. Nevertheless the fetish partakes more of the nature of those spirits which are subservient to man (for example, the Arabian
jinn
) than of gods proper, and if it is prayed and sacrificed to on occasion, the ‘prayers’ are rather of the nature of a magical