In 1798 in Ohio, a Methodist minister named James B. Finley met with members of the Wyandot nation and asked them about their God and his. The Wyandots were descendants of Wendat refugees who, more than a century before, had fled from a land that kept changing names, and had just seven years earlier been renamed again, this time to Upper Canada.
He recorded what a Wendat historian describes as “the legend of a power struggle between the Amerindians’ God and the white man’s God.” This is what the Methodist wrote that the Wyandots told him:
Once, in the days of our grandfathers, many years ago, this white man’s God came himself to this country and claimed us. But our God met him somewhere near the great mountains, and they disputed about the right to this country. At last they agreed to settle this question by trying their power to remove a mountain. The white man’s God got down on his knees, opened a big Book, and began to pray and talk, but the mountain stood fast. Then the red man’s God took his magic wand, and began to pow-wow, and beat the turtle-shell, and the mountain trembled, shook, and stood by him. The white man’s God got frightened, and ran off, and we have not heard of him since.
Quoted from Georges E. Sioui’s Huron-Wendat: The Heritage of the Circle.