Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/37

 They pay no religious veneration to the dead. 25

the ancient idolaters. Even when YOHEWAH was conducting Ifrael in the \vildernefs, Aaron was forced to allow them a golden calf, according to the ufage of the Egyptians : and at the defection of the ten tribes, they wor- fhipped before the emblematical images of two calves, through the policy of Jeroboam. The Troglodites ufed to ftrangle their aged, with a cow's tail : and fome of the Eaft-Indians are faid to fancy they mall be happy, by holding a cow's tail in their hand when dying : others imagine the Ganges to wafh away all their crimes and pollution. The Indian Americans, on the contrary, though they derive the name of cattle from part of the divine cffential name, (as (hall be elfewhere obferved) and ule the name of a buffalo as a war appellative, and the name of a tribe ; yet their regard to them, centres only in their ufefulnefs for the fupport of human life : and they believe they can perform their religious ablutions and purifications, in any deep clean water.

The fuperflitious heathens, whom the Hebrews called, Tedonim, pretended that the bones of thofe they wormipped as gods when alive, revealed both prefent and future things, that were otherwife concealed : and the hieroglyphics, the prieftly legible images, which the Egyptians infcribed on the tombs of the deceafed, to praife their living virtue, and incite youth to imitate them, proved a great means of inducing them in procefs of time to worfhip their dead. But the Americans praife only the virtues of their dead, as fit copies of imitation for the living. They firmly believe that the hand of God cuts off the days of their dead friend, by his pre-determined pur- pofe. They are fo far from deifying fellow-creatures, that they prefer none of their own people, only according to the general flandard of reputed merit.

The Chinefe, likewife, though they call God by the appellative, Cham Ti^ and have their temples of a quadrangular form, yet they are grofs idolaters j like the ancient Egyptians, inftead of offering up religious oblations to the great Creator and Preferver of the univerfe, they pay them to the pictures of their deceafed anceftors, and erect temples to them, in folitary places without their cities likewife to the fun, moon, planets, fpirits, and inventors of arts; efpecially to the great Confucius, notwithftanding he ftrictly prohibited the like idolatrous rites. And the religious modes of the ancient inhabitants

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