Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/250

 Jin Account of the Cheerake Nation.

but they can draw it to them ; which is agreeable to what 'we obfcrve, through the whole fyftem of animated beings. Nature endues them with proper capacities to fuftain life ; as they cannot fupport themfelves, by their fpeed, or -cunning to fpring from an ambufcade, it is needful they Ihould have the bewitching craft of their eyes and forked tongues.
 * as they fay, no living creature moves within the- reach of their fight,

The defcription the Indians give us of their colour, is as various as what we are told of the camelion, that feems to the fpectator to change its colour, by every different petition he may view it in j which proceeds from the piercing rays of light that blaze from their foreheads, fo as to dazzle the eyes, from whatever quarter they pod themfelves for in each of their heads, there is a large carbuncle, which not only re pels, but they affirm, fullies the meridian beams of the fun. They reckon it fo dangerous to difturb thole creatures, that no temptation can in duce them to betray their fecret recefs to the prophane. They call them and all of the rattle-fnake kind, kings, or chieftains of the fnakes ; and they allow one fuch to every different fpecies of the brute creation. An old trader of Cheeowhee told me, that for the reward of two pieces of ftroud-cloth, he engaged a couple of young warriors to ihew him the place of their refort ; but the head-men would not by any means al low it, on account of a fuperftitious tradition for they fancy the kil ling of them would expofe them to the danger of being bit by the other inferior fpecies of that ferpentine tribe, who love their chieftains, .and know by inftincT: thofe who malicioufly killed them, as they fight only in their own defence, and that of their young ones, never biting thofe who do not difturb them. Although they efteem thofe rattle fnakes as chieftains of that fpecies, yet they do not deify them, as the Egyp tians did all the ferpentine kind, and likewife Ibis, that preyed upon them ; however, it feems to have fprung from the fame origin, for I once faw the Chikkafah Archi-magus to chew fome fnake-root, blow it on his hands, and then take up a rattle fnake without damage foon afterwards he laid it down carefully, in a hollow tree, left I mould have killed it. Once on the Chikkafah trading war-path, a little above the country of the Mufkohge, as I was returning to camp from hunting, I found in a large cane fwamp, a fellow-traveller, an old Indian trader, inebriated and naked, except his Indian breeches and maccaieenes ; in that habit he fat, I holding

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