Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/128

 1 1 6 On the defcent of the American Indians from the Jews.

They make fait for dome/lie ufe, out of a faltifh kind of grafs, which, grows on rocks, by burning it to aflies, making ftrong lye of it, and boiling it in earthen pots to a proper confidence. They do not offer any fruits of the field, except at the firft-fruit-offering : fo that their neslect of facrifice, at certain times, feems not to be the effect of an igno rant or vicious, but of their intelligent and virtuous difpofidon, and to be a ftrong circumftantial evidence of their Ifraelitilh extraction.

Though they believe the upper heavens to be inhabited by IJhtoboolla Abet) and a great multitude of inferior good fpirits ; yet they are firmly per- fuaded that the divine omnipr.efent Spirit of fire and light refides on earth r in their annual facred fire while it is unpolluted -, and that he kindly ac cepts their lawful offerings, if their own conduct is agreeable to the old divine law, which was delivered to their forefathers. The former notion of the Deity, is agreeable to thofe natural images, with which the divine penmen, through all the prophetic writings, have drawn YOHEWAH ELOHIM. When God was pleafed with Aaron's priefthood and offerings,, the holy fire defcended and confumed the burnt-offering on the altar, &c.

By the divine records of the Hebrews, this was the emblematical token of the divine prefence ; and the fmoke of the victim afcending toward heaven, is reprefented as a fweet favour to God. The people who have lived fo long apart from the reft of mankind, are not to be wondered ar, if they have forgotten the end and meaning of the facrifice j and are rather to- be pitied for feeming to believe, like the ignorant part of the Ifraelites, that the virtue is either in the form of offering the facrifice, or in the di vinity they imagine to refide on earth in the facred annual fire -, likewise,, for feeming to have forgotten that the virtue was in the thing typified.

In the year 1748, when I was at theKoosah on my way to the Chikkafah country, I had a converfation on this fubject, with feveral of the more in telligent of the Mufkohge traders. One of them told me, that juft before, while he and feveral others were drinking fpirituous liquors with the In dians, one of the warriors having drank to excefs, reeled into the fire, and burned himfelf very much. He roared, foamed, and fpoke the worft things againft God, that their language could exprefs. He upbraided him with

ingratitude,

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