ABSTRACT
After having attempted to analyse primitive mentality, at least as far as the essential characteristics of its being and its functioning are concerned, it will be interesting to see how it develops and the laws which govern this development. The Indians had "saved their face", and the successive "deaths" occasioned by the display of the weapons, utensils, and food of the white men, did not last long. All these new experiences, all these astonishing persons and things are almost immediately classified in their minds, accustomed as they are to imagine the occult powers. For the primitive, everything yet unknown is suspicious; who knows what fatal power may possibly be concealed in the apparently harmless food offered to the native. After prolonged intercourse with white men, native ideas and sentiments about the whites and what they bring with them, gradually become modified.
