Some travellers and writers have asserted that the Indian has no religion. In the vulgarly-accepted meaning of the word he may have none. There is great variation among the groups, the tribes even—I venture to say—among the individuals. So far as they believe in anything they believe in the existence of supreme good and bad spirits; but their beliefs are always indefinite, only half understood even by themselves. To a certain extent it is open to the medicineman, the chief priest of their magico-religious system, to vary, or even to disregard any current belief. Among individuals are to be found sceptics of every grade. On the whole their religion is a theism, inasmuch as their God has a vague, personal, anthropomorphic existence. His habitat is above the skies, the blue dome of heaven, which they look upon as the roof of the world that descends on all sides in contact with the earth. Yet again it is a pantheism, this God being represented in all beneficent nature; for every good thing is imbued with his spirit, or with individual spirits subject to him.

In essence the idea of God is not that of a Supreme Being, and not entirely that of a Creator, but rather that of a Superior Being, possessed by an indulgent tolerance for all mankind. But he suggests only the negative idea.