Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/251

An Account of the Cheerake Nation. Holding a great rattle-snake round the neck, with his left hand besmeared with proper roots, and with the other, applying the roots to the teeth, in order to repel the poison, before he drew them out; which having effected, he laid it down tenderly at a distance. I then killed it, to his great dislike, as he was afraid it would occasion misfortunes to himself and me. I told him, as he had taken away its teeth, common pity should induce one to put it out of misery, and that a charitable action could never bring ill on any one, but his education prevented his fears from subsiding. On a Christmas-day, at the trading house of that harmless, brave, but unfortunate man, I took the foot of a guinea-deer out of his shot-pouch and another from my own partner, which they had very safely sewed in the corner of each of their otter-skin-pouches, to enable them, according to the Indian creed, to kill deer, bear, buffaloe, beaver, and other wild beasts, in plenty: but they were so infatuated with the Indian superstitious belief of the power of that charm, that all endeavours of reconciling them to reason were ineffectual: I therefore returned them, for as they were Nimrods, or hunters of men, as well as of wild beasts, I imagined, I should be answerable to myself for every accident that might befal them, by depriving them of what they depended upon as their chief good, in that wild sphere of life. No wonder that the long-defolate savages of the far extending desarts of America, should entertain the former superstitious notions of ill luck by that, and good fortune by this; as those of an early christian education, are so soon imprest with the like opinions. The latter was killed on the old Chikkafah, or American-Flanders path, in company with another expert brave man, in the year 1745, by twenty Choktah savages, set on by the christian French of Tumbikpe garrison, in consequence of which, I staid by myself the following summer-season, in the Chikkafah country, and when the rest of the trading people and all our horses were gone down to the English settlements, I persuaded the Choktah to take up the bloody tomohawk against those perfidious French, in revenge of a long train of crying blood: and had it not been for the self-interested policy of a certain governor, those numerous savages, with the war-like Chikkafah, would have destroyed the Missisippi settlements, root and branch, except those who kept themselves closely confined in garrison. When I treat of the Choktah country, I shall more particularly relate that very-material affair,