Page:Good Newes from New England.djvu/71

 ordinary means, they send for this Powah though ordinarily their travel is not so extreme as in our parts of the world, they being of a more hardy nature; for on the third day after child-birth I have seen the mother with the infant upon a small occasion in cold weather in a boat upon the Sea.

Many sacrifices the Indians use, and in some cases kill children. It seemeth they are various in their religious worship in a little distance, and grow more and more cold in their worship to Kiehtan; saying in their memory he was much more called upon. The Narragansetts exceed in their blind devotion, and have a great spacious house wherein only some few (that are as we may term them Priests) come: thither at certain known times resort all their people, and offer almost all the riches they have to their gods, as kettles, skins, hatchets, beads, knives, etc. all which are cast by the Priests into a great fire that they make in the midst of the house, and there consumed to ashes. To this offering every man bringeth freely, and the more he is known to bring, hath the better esteem of all men. This the other Indians about us approve of as good, and wish their Sachems would appoint the like: and because the plague hath not reigned at Narragansetts as at other places about them, they attribute to this custom there used.

The Pnieses are men of great courage and wisdom, and to these also the Devil appeareth more familiarly then to others, and as we conceive maketh covenant with them to preserve them from death, by wounds, with arrows, knives, hatchets, etc. or at least both themselves and especially the people think themselves to be freed from the same. And though against their batters all of them by painting disfigure themselves, yet they are known by their cottage and boldness, by reason whereof one of them will chase almost an hundred men, for they account it death for whomsoever stand in their way. These are highly esteemed of all sorts of people, and are of the Sachems