Unless this distinction is fully comprehended, American mythology loses most of its meaning.
The assertion has been so often repeated, even down to the latest writers, that the American Indians were nearly all sun-worshipers, that I take pains formally to contradict it.

Neither the Sun nor the Spirit of the Sun was their chief divinity.
Of course, the daily history of the appearance and disappearance of light is intimately connected with the apparent motion of the sun.

Hence, in the myths there is often a seeming identification of the two, which I have been at no pains to avoid.

But the identity is superficial only; it entirely disappears in other parts of the myth, and the conceptions, as fundamentally distinct, must be studied separately, to reach accurate results.

It is an easy, but by no means a profound method of treating these religions, to dismiss them all by the facile explanations of "animism," and "sun and moon worship." I have said, and quoted strong authority to confirm the opinion, that the native tribes of America have lost ground in morals and have retrograded in their religious life since the introduction of Christianity.