Page:Surprising life and sufferings of Peter Williamson.pdf/11

 is allowed they pray to their inferior deities for success in all their undertakings for plenty of food, and other necessaries of life; it appears also that they acknowledge one supreme Being; but him they adore not, because they believe he is too far exalted above them, and too happy in himself, to be concerned about the trifling affairs of poor mortals. They seem also to believe a future state; and that, after death, they will be removed to their friends, who have gone before them to an Elysium or Paradise beyond the Western mountains. Now the French Priests, who are sent among them under pretence of instructing them in the Christian religion, to aid the political views of their nation, have instilled into these Indians a belief, “That the Son of God came into the world to save all mankind and destroy all evil spirits that now trouble them; that the English have killed him, and that ever since, the evil spirits are permitted to walk on the earth: that if the English were all destroyed, the Son of the Good Man, who is God, would come again, and banish all evil spirits from their lands, and then they would have nothing to fear or disturb them.” Cajolled by these false but artful insinnations of the French Jesuits, the Indians from that time have endeavoured to massaere all the English, in order that the Son of God might come again on the earth, and rid them of such slavish fears and terrible apprehensions, by exterminating the objects thereof.

After that 40 years lave elapsed since the commission of those most barbarous inhumanities, I cannot but take notice of the justice