This book gives an account of the religion of the Indians of California. It describes the religion as very similar to that of savage and uncivilized races the world over. Like all such peoples, the California Indians were in an animistic state of mind, in which they attributed life, intelligence, and especially supernatural power, to virtually all living and lifeless things. They lacked no less the ideas and practices of shamanism, the universal accompaniment of animism: namely, the belief that certain men, through communication with the animate supernatural world, had the power to accomplish what was contrary to, or rather above, the events of daily ordinary experience, which latter in so far as they were distinguished from the happenings caused by supernatural agencies, were of natural, meaningless, and, as it were, accidental origin. As in most parts of the world, belief in shamanistic power was centered most strongly on disease and death, which among most tribes were not only believed to be dispellable but to be entirely caused by shamans. In common with the other American Indians, those of California made dancing, and with it always singing, a conspicuous part of nearly all their ceremonies that were of a public or tribal nature. They differed from almost all other tribes of North America by showing a much weaker development of ritualism, and symbolism shading into pictography, which constitute perhaps the most distinctive feature of the religion of the Americans as a whole.
