Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/141

 *beir ideas of contrasting pollution. 129

novitiate in our facred myfteries, to go through her catechilm, and the long marriage ceremony, although it was often interrupted by the bowl. This being over, (he proceeded to go to bed with her partner, while the beloved man fung a pfalm at the door, concerning the fruitful vine. Her name he foon entered in capital letters, to grace the firft title-page of his church book of converts ; which he often mewed to his Englifh fheep, and with much fatis- faflion would inform them how, by the co-operation of the Deity, his earned endeavours changed an Indian Dark-lanthorn into a lamp of chriftian light. However, afterward to his great grief, he was obliged on account of her adul teries, to erafe her name from thence, and fnter it anew in fome of the crowded pages of female delinquents.

When an Ifraelite died in any houfe or tent, all who were in it, and the furniture belonging to it contracted a pollution, which continued for feven days. All likewile who touched the body of a dead perfon, or his grave, were impure for feven days. Similar notions prevail among the Indiana. The Choktah are fo exceedingly infatuated in favour of the infallible judg ment of their pretended prophets, as to allow them without the leaft regret, to diflocate the necks of any of their fick who are in a weak ftate of body, to put them out of their pain, when they prefume to reveal the determined will of the Deity to fhorten his days, which is afTerted to be communicated in a dream ; by the time that this theo-phyfical operation is performed on a patient, they have <a fcaffold prepared oppofite to the door, whereon he is to lie till they remove the bones in the fourth moon after, to the remote bone-houfe of that family : they immediately carry out the corpfe, mourn over it, and place it in that dormitory, which is ftrongly pallifadoed around, left the children fhould become polluted even by pafting under the dead. Formerly when the owner of a houie died$ they fet fire to it, and to all the provifions of every kind ; or fold the whole at a cheap rate to the trading people, without paying the kafb regard to the fcarcity of the times. Many of them ftill obferve the fame rule, through a wild imitation of a ceremonial obfervance of the Ifraelites, in burning; the bed whereon a dead perfon lay, becaufe of its impurity, This is no copy from the ancien: heathens, but from the Hebrews.

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