Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/42

 r:> On the dcfcent of the American Indians from the Jews.

their archetypes, fire, light, and air, or fpirit, which reprefented the attri butes, names, and offices of Tobewab Elohim, they divided them into fo many various gods, and paid them divine worfhip. Yet, though the Indian Americans have the fuppofed cherubimical figures, in their fynhedria, and, through a ftrong religious principle, dance there, perhaps every winter's night, always in a bowing pofture, and frequently fing Halelu-Tah To HeWab, I could never perceive, nor be informed, that they fubftituted them, or the fimilitude of any thing whatfoever, as objects of divine adoration, in the room of the great invifible divine effence. They life the feathers of the eagle's tail, in certain friendly and religious dances, but the whole town will contribute, to the value of 200 deer-fkins, for killing a iarge eagle ; (the bald eagle they do not tfteem) ; and the man alfo gets an honourable title for the exploit, as if he had brought in the fcalp of an enemy. Now, if they reckoned the eagle a god, they would not only refufe perfonal profits, and honours, to him who killed it, but afiuredly inflict on him the fevereft punilhment, for committing fo atrocious and facrilegious an act.

I have feen in feveral of the Indian fynhedria, two white painted eagles carved out of poplar wood, with their wings ftretched out, and railed five feet off the ground, (landing at the corner, clofe to their red and white imperial feats : and, on the inner fide of each of the deep-notched pieces of wood, where the eagles ftand, the Indians frequently paint, with a chalky clay, the figure of a man, with buffalo horns and that of a panther, with the fame colour; from which I conjecture, efpecially, connected with their other rites and cuftoms foon to be mentioned, that the former emblem was defigned to defcribe the divine attributes, as that bird excels the reft of the feathered kind, in various fuperior qualities ; and that the latter fymbol is a contraction of the cherubimical figures, the man, the bull, and the lion. And this opinion is corroborated by an eftablimed cuftom, both religious and martial, among them, which obliges them to paint thofe facred emblems anew, at the firft fruit-offering, or the annual expiation of fins. Every one of their war-leaders muft alfo make three fuccefsful wolfijh campaigns^ with their reputed holy ark, before he is admitted to wear a pair of a young buffalo-bull's horns on his forehead, or to fing the triumphal war fong, and to dance with the fame animal's tail flicking up behind him, while he fings To To, &c.

Now

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