TEXAS INDIAN PAPERS, 1846-1859
94
The Comanche notions of religion are as crude, imperfect, and limited, as of geography or astronomy. They believe in, or have some indefinite traditional idea of, the Great Spirit; but I never discovered any distinct mode or semblance of worship among them. I frequently observed, early in the morning, a shield, such as they use in war, elevated at the point of a javelin, (the hilt in the ground,) and invariably facing the east. Whether done in reverence to the great rising luminary, and of Ghebir origin, I did not ascertain. They believe in witchcraft, and sometimes attribute their ailments to the magical influence of some subtle and malignant enemy of their own species. They held the Keechi, a small and distinct tribe then residing on the waters of the River Trinity, in peculiar detestation, on account of their supposed powers of sorcery. They imagine that good men (and adroitness and daring in taking scalps or stealing horses are capital evidences of goodness) are translated at death to elysian hunting-grounds, where buffalo are always abundant and fat. The reverse of this maximum of Comanche felicity is assigned to the wicked. In order to facilitate the posthumous enjoyments of a deceased warrior, they sacrifice some of his best horses, and bury in his grave his favorite implements of the chase for his future use. They have no determinate idea of the locality of these imaginary hunting-grounds. They mourn for the dead systematically and periodically with great noise and vehemence; at which times the female relatives of the de- ceased scarify their arms and legs with sharp flints until the blood trickles from a thousand pores. The duration of these lamentations depends on the quality and estimation of the de- eeased; varying from three to five or seven days: after which the curtain of oblivion seems to be drawn around the grave. ·Whether this bloody rite of scarification has descended by tra- dition from the worshippers of Baal, is a question in elucidation of which they have no relic, oral or material, or other adumbra- tion of evidence, beyond the obvious similitude of the act itself with a custom of the heathen of the antique Canaan. I perceived no order of priesthood, or anything analogous to it, among them; if they recognise any ecclesiastical authority whatever, it resides in their chiefs; but I think their religious sentiments are entirely too loose, vague, and ·inoperative, to have produced any such institution. The elevation of the shield is the only act I ever noticed among them, that afforded the slight- est indication of religious concernment; and I doubt if they have
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