THE UNWRITTEN SCRIPTURES A Living Book.
The Sioux Story of Creation.
The First Battle.
Another Version of the Flood.
Our Animal Ancestry.
A missionary once undertook to instruct a group of Indians in the truths of his holy religion.
He told them of the creation of the earth in six days, and of the fall of our first parents by eating an apple.
The courteous savages listened attentively, and, after thanking him, one related in his turn a very ancient tradition concerning the origin of the maize.
But the missionary plainly showed his disgust and disbelief, indignantly saying:— “What I delivered to you were sacred truths, but this that you tell me is mere fable and falsehood!” “My brother,” gravely replied the offended Indian, “it seems that you have not been well grounded in the rules of civility.
You saw that we, who practice these rules, believed your stories; why, then, do you refuse to credit ours?” Every religion has its Holy Book, and ours was a mingling of history, poetry, and prophecy, of precept and folk-lore, even such as the modern reader finds within the covers of his Bible.
This Bible of ours was our whole literature, a living Book, sowed as precious seed by our wisest sages, and springing anew in the wondering eyes and upon the innocent lips of little children.
Upon its hoary wisdom of proverb and fable, its mystic and legendary lore thus sacredly preserved and transmitted from father to son, was based in large part our customs and philosophy.
Naturally magnanimous and open-minded, the red man prefers to believe that the Spirit of God is not breathed into man alone, but that the whole created universe is a sharer in the immortal perfection of its Maker.
His imaginative and poetic mind, like that of the Greek, assigns to every mountain, tree, and spring its spirit, nymph, or divinity either beneficent or mischievous.
The heroes and demigods of Indian tradition reflect the characteristic trend of his thought, and his attribution of personality and will to the elements, the sun and stars, and all animate or inanimate nature.
In the Sioux story of creation, the great Mysterious One is not brought directly upon the scene or conceived in anthropomorphic fashion, but remains sublimely in the background.
The Sun and the Earth, representing the male and female principles, are the main elements in his creation, the other planets being subsidiary.
The enkindling warmth of the Sun entered into the bosom of our mother, the Earth, and forthwith she conceived and brought forth life, both vegetable and animal.
Finally there appeared mysteriously Ish-na-e-cha-ge, the “First-Born,” a being in the likeness of man, yet more than man, who roamed solitary among the animal people and understood their ways and their language.
They beheld him with wonder and awe, for they could do nothing without his knowledge.
He had pitched his tent in the centre of the land, and there was no spot impossible for him to penetrate.
At last, like Adam, the “First-Born” of the Sioux became weary of living alone, and formed for himself a companion—not a mate, but a brother—not out of a rib from his side, but from a splinter which he drew from his great toe!
This was the Little Boy Man, who was not created full-grown, but as an innocent child, trusting and helpless.
His Elder Brother was his teacher throughout every stage of human progress from infancy to manhood, and it is to the rules which he laid down, and his counsels to the Little Boy Man, that we trace many of our most deep-rooted beliefs and most sacred customs.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage explicitly describes the Indian worldview where every mountain, tree, spring, and element possesses a spirit, nymph, or divinity, making animism a central theme.
The infant or child as symbol of the unfallen, undivided spiritual state; return to primordial simplicity.
The narrative of the 'Little Boy Man' created as an innocent, trusting, and helpless child who is taught by his elder brother highlights the value of this state.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The text details the Sioux story of creation, including the roles of the Sun and Earth as male and female principles and the emergence of the First-Born.
The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.
The passage notes that in the Sioux creation story, the great Mysterious One remains sublimely in the background and is not conceived in anthropomorphic fashion. [quarantine-w4: divine_hiddenness x native_american — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The passage states that 'the Spirit of God is not breathed into man alone, but that the whole created universe is a sharer in the immortal perfection of its Maker,' a clear expression of divine presence pervading all of creation.
The reunification of complementary divine principles (male-female, spirit-matter) as a symbol of wholeness and salvation.
Creation is described through the union of male (Sun) and female (Earth) principles conceiving life. [quarantine-w4: divine_marriage x native_american — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The passage explicitly states 'The Sun and the Earth, representing the male and female principles, are the main elements in his creation,' presenting the masculine-feminine generative principle as a structural feature of cosmic creation.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The Sioux narrative traces a staged descent from the Mysterious One (unconditioned background) through Sun/Earth (principles) to life, then the First-Born, then the Little Boy Man (full humanity), a directional process from the unconditioned to materialized existence.
Sacred knowledge transmitted as living speech rather than fixed writing — scripture carried in memory, song, and telling, renewed in each generation; the unwritten canon of a tradition.
The passage is titled 'The Unwritten Scriptures' and emphasizes the 'Living Book' transmitted orally from father to son rather than written text.
Critique of outward religious observance that lacks inner transformation; form without substance.
The anecdote about the missionary criticizing Indian traditions while expecting them to accept his own serves as a critique of religious exclusivity and lack of civility.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The concept that humans and the universe share in the 'immortal perfection of its Maker' aligns with partaking in divine nature.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The text states that the red man believes the Spirit of God is not breathed into man alone but that the whole created universe shares in the immortal perfection of its Maker.