both languages being deficient in consonants, and totally wanting in
labials. The Algonquin is also deficient in several letters, among others
the consonants _f, l, v, x, z_. In the Indian tongues, many of the
sounds are merely guttural, and produced without any movement of the
lips. _Ou_, as sounded in _you_, is of this description; to distinguish
it from the articulated sounds, the early missioners marked it by the
figure 8.

The religion of the native tribes of North America was a species of
pantheism. They believed that in every visible object dwelt good or evil
spirits, who exercised a certain influence over human events, and they
tried to propitiate them by sacrifices and prayers. Faith in dreams
constituted the foundation of almost all their superstitions. The dream
was to them an irrevocable decree which it was never allowable to slight.
It, therefore, formed the starting point of their deliberations, and the
basis of their decisions. Rather than reject the warning of a dream, they
would have consigned to the flames or the waves the produce of a
successful hunting or fishing expedition, or of a rich harvest. The most
intelligent held as a theory that dreams are the speech of the soul,
which through them manifests her innate desires, these desires remaining
for ever unknown, unless thus revealed. To carry out the dream was,
therefore, to satisfy the soul's cravings; to slight it was to excite her
desires afresh.

They believed that after death the soul wandered for a time in the
vicinity of the body which it had quitted, and then departed on a long
journey to a village in the direction of the setting sun. The country of
the dead differed but little in their imagination, from the land of the
living, and accordingly, looking on death merely as a passage from one
region to another nearly similar, they met the summons with indifference.