Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/189

 tteir Burial of tie Heael. 177

rhe heathens. After his fong, he ftepped in : I faluted him, faying, " Are you come my beloved old friend ?'" he replied, jirabre-O. " I am come in the name of OEA." I told him, I was glad to fee, that in this mad age, he (till retained the old Chikkafah virtues. He faid, that as he came with a glad heart to fee me his old friend, he imagined he could not do me a more kind fervice, than to fecure my houfe from the power of the evil fpirits of the north, fouth, and weft, and, from witches, and wiz ards, who go about in dark nights, in the fhape of bears, hogs, and wolves, to fpoil people : '* the very month before, added he, we killed an old witch, for having ufed deftructive charms." Becaufe a child was fuddenly taken ill, and died, on the phyfidan's falfe evidence, the fa ther went to the poor helplefs old woman who was fitting innocent, and unfufpedling, and funk his tomohawk into her head, without the leaft fear cf being called to an account. They call witches and wizards, IJhtabe* and Hoollabe* " man-killers," and " fpoilers of things facred." My pro phetic friend defired me to think myfelf fecure from thofe dangerous enemies of darknefs, for (faid he) Tarooa l/htohooUo-Antarooare, " I have fung the fong of the great holy one." The Indians are fo tenacious of concealing their religious myfleries, that I never before obferved fuch an invocation on the like occafion adjuring evil fpirits, witches, &c. by the awful name of deity.

��ARGUMENT XIX.

The Hebrews have at all times been very careful in the BURIAL of their dead to be deprived of it was confidered as one of the greateft of evils. They made it a point of duty to perform the funeral obfequies of their friends often embalmed the dead bodies of thofe who were rich, and even buried treafure in the tombs with their dead. Jofephus tells us, that in king David's fepulchre, was buried fuch a prodigious quantity of treafures, that Hyrcanus the Maccabean, took three thoufand talents out of it, about thirteen hundred years after, to get rid of Antiochus then befieging Jeru- falem. And their people of diftinction, we are told, followed the like cuf- tom of burying gold and filver with the dead. Thus it was an univerfal cuftom with the ancient Peruvians, when the owner died to bury his

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