Only one of them, the FOUR, has any prominence in the religions of the red race, but this is so marked and so universal, that at a very early period in my studies I felt convinced that if the reason for its adoption could be discovered, much of the apparent confusion which reigns among them would be dispelled.
Such a reason must take its rise from some essential relation of man to nature, everywhere prominent, everywhere the same.

It is found in the _adoration of the cardinal points_.
The red man, as I have said, was a hunter; he was ever wandering through pathless forests, coursing over boundless prairies.

It seems to the white race not a faculty, but an instinct that guides him so unerringly.
He is never at a loss.

Says a writer who has deeply studied his character: "The Indian ever has the points of the compass present to his mind, and expresses himself accordingly in words, although it shall be of matters in his own house."[67-1] The assumption of precisely four cardinal points is not of chance; it is recognized in every language; it is rendered essential by the anatomical structure of the body; it is derived from the immutable laws of the universe.

Whether we gaze at the sunset or the sunrise, or whether at night we look for guidance to the only star of the twinkling thousands that is constant to its place, the anterior and posterior planes of our bodies, our right hands and our left coincide with the parallels and meridians.