Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/200

 i88 fin the defcent of the American Indians from the Jews.

tnus tired themfelves, they might with equal propriety have afked by- ftanders in the manner of the native Irifh, Ara ci fuar bafs " And who is dead ?"

��They formerly dreffcd their heads with black mofs on thofe folemn dfe^* lions i and the ground adjacent to the place of interment, they now beat with }aurel-bumes, the women having their hair dimevded : the firft of which c attorns feems to be derived from the Hebrew cuftom of wearing fack- clothat their funeral folemnities, and on other occafions, when they afflifted their fowls before God to which divine writ pften alludes, in defcribing- the blacknefs of the Ikies : and the laurel being an ever-green, is a lively emblem of the eternity of the human foul, and the pleafant ftate it enters. into after death, according to antiquity. They beat it on the ground, to exprefs their fharp pungent grief; and, perhaps, to imitate the Hebrew trumpeters for the dead, in order to make as ftriking a found as they po fibly can on fo doleful an occanon.

Though the Hebrews had no pofitive precept that obliged the widow to mourn the death of her hufband, or to continue her widowhood, for any> time ; yet the gravity of their tempers, and their fcrupulous nicety of ths law of purity, introduced the obfervance of thofe modeft and religious cuftoms, as firmly under the penalty of fhame, as if they bore the fanclioi* of law -f-. In imitation of them, the Indians have copied fo exactly, as to compel the widow to act the part of the difconfolate dove, for the irreparable loft of her mate. Very different is the cuftom of other na-* tions : the Africans, when any of their head-men die, kill all their flaves, their friends that were deareft to them, and all their wives whom they loved beft, that they may accompany and ferve them, in the other world, which is a moft diabolical Ammonitifh facrifice of human blood. The Eaft-India widows may refufe to be burned oa their hufbands funeral piles, with impunity, if they become proftitutes, or public women to fing and dance at marriages, or on other occafions of rejoicing. How fuperior,

t Theodofius tells us, Lib. i. Legum de fecundis nuptiis, that women were infamous by the civil law, who married a fecond time before a yeaj> or at leaft ten months were expired,

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