These early missionaries, as I mentioned, did find most of the dope about this, and they reported it endlessly, before of course they got executed or something of the sort or exorcised themselves from either the Indian or the white society. And we find there are very few books of this character still extant; they are very rare. And I’ve had the privilege of reading some of them. Very fancy.
They had ideas of soul transference. They had ideas of exteriorization. They had a medical-type exteriorization, you know. You fed a guy enough of the proper bark, you know, and gave him enough fumes, well, he’d find himself out of his ruddy ‘ead and way up in the air, you know.
And they apparently could do something with animals, such as exteriorize and do something with the animal, you know. Make an animal do something peculiar and then reinteriorize and so forth. Quite interesting. And of course, their religion is indistinguishable from Christianity. That’s why they had such a hard time making the Indian into a Christian. The Indian was full of endless arguments, of course, because the Indian believed in one god. And there the missionary would come a cropper at once.
He’d come in there with the big news that there is one god, you see. And the Indian would say, “Mm-hm. Ug.” Total agreement, you see. “And at one time there was an enormous flood, and there was a fellow by the name of Noah, and so on. And he built an ark, and all of the beings on earth all died and perished in the flood except …” And the Indian will say, “Mm-mm-mmmm.” And when the white man gets all finished telling him about it, why, he says, “Name not Noah. Name Hecton.” Knew all about the flood, you see, but he had a different personnel in there.
Adam and Eve – knew all about Adam and Eve, except Adam and Eve wasn’t quite the right names so the white man wasn’t quite smart. He wasn’t in the know. You see, all man had descended from Adam and Eve, and there had been a flood, and one god and, you know, the lot, you know. And God had created all the animals. Oh, yes, see, religion never had too much of a chance because the Indian never found out there was any difference.
But he had a very advanced medical technology that was around the subject of herbs, and so on, which was quite good. And it all got lost. Lost the lot because it wasn’t a written technology, and it went down by word of mouth, and so on. And you had to have new people to be studying the thing in order to preserve it.
And as soon as the white civilization made an encroachment and disease like measles – which they call smallpox, but actually was just measles – reached, of course, from continent edge to continent edge and practically wiped them out long before they had even heard of the white man. So much so that Lewis and Clark could uncork a little bottle, or just pretend to start to uncork a little bottle, saying, “Now you will have peace with all the tribes here on the Pacific Coast, and if you don’t I’m going to take the cork out of this bottle and empty its contents over the land. And it contains the red death.” And all the chiefs went pale and said we will have peace and they did. Thereafter, they had peace. That was a peaceful mission.
Blackmail. Or redmail. 1
Notes
- Hubbard, L. Ron (1961, August 31) What is Auditing St. Hill Special Briefing Course; East Grinstead, Sussex ↩