Page:Life and journals of Kah-ke-wa-quo-na-by.djvu/27

 endeavoured to instill moral principles into tho minds of his children, and would not allow them to work or hunt on the Sabbath; but often have I on that sacred day stolen the gun out of the window, and gone out shooting without his knowledge.

In the year 1820, I was induced at the request of my father to receive the ordinance of Baptism, and accordingly went to the Mohawk Church, and was baptized by the Rev. Ralph Leeming, of Ancaster, a Clergyman of the Church of England. The Mohawk Catechist, Henry A. Hill, stood as my godfather.

The principal motives which induced me to acquiesce with this wish, were, that I might be entitled to all the privileges of the white inhabitants, and a conviction that it was a duty I owed to the Great Spirit, to take upon me the name of a Christian, as from reading a Sermon, I began to think that the Christian religion was true.

Previous to this, I had been halting between two opinions. Sometimes whilst reading the Word of God, or hearing it preached, I would be almost persuaded to become a Christian; but when I looked at the conduct of the whites who were called Christians, and saw them drunk, quarreling, and fighting, cheating the poor Indians, and acting as if there was no God, I was led to think there could be no truth in the white man's religion, and felt inclined to fall back again to my old superstitions. My being baptized had no effect upon my life. I continued the same wild Indian youth as before. I was only a Christian outwardly, and not in heart, not yet having received the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Since my conversion to God, one thing has made my heart very glad, and which is, that amidst all the temptations and examples of drunkenness to which I was exposed, I never fell into that vice, although most of my young companions did. I always viewed drunkenness as beneath the character of an