Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/44

 32 On the defcent of the American Indians from the Jews.

time of their moft religious exercifes, or their other friendly rejoicings there,, they do not pay the leaft adoration to any of thofe exprefllve emblems, nor feem to take any notice of them : which is the very reverie to the ufage of all the ancient heathen world. Hence one would conclude, that they not only brought with them the letter, but the meaning of thofe reputed che- rubimical figures, which were defigned to reprefent the infeparable attri butes of Tohewah.

It is uriiverfally agreed, by the chriftian world, that every religious ob- fervance of the ancient heathens, which the Mofaic law approved of, was ac firft derived from divine appointment ; and as we are afiured in the firft pages of the faored oracles, concerning Cain, Gen. iv. 16. " that he went out from the pn 'fence of the Lord" we learn, that God, in that early ftate of the world', chofe a place for his more immediate pretence, p^3, his faces, ap pearances, or forms refiding in, or between, the cherubim. We may, there fore, reafonably conclude, from the various gods, and religious worfhip of the ancient heathens, and from the remaining divine emblems, and family names of the Indian Americans, that the former deduced thofe emblems they deifyed, from the compounded cherubim in paradiie : and that the Indians derived their cherubic figures, and names of tribes, from the cheru bim that covered the mercy-feat, in the tabernacle, and in Solomon's tem ple, alluded to and delineated in feveral parts of the facred oracles.

ARGUMENT III.

Agreeable to the THEOCRACY, or divine government of Ifrael, the Indians think the Deity to be the immediate head of their ftate.

All the nations of Indians are exceedingly intoxicated with religious pride, and have an inexpreflible contempt of the white people, unlefs we except thofe half-favage Europeans, who are become their profelytes. Nothings is the moft favourable name they give us, in their fet fpeeches : even the Indians who were formerly bred in amity with us, and in enmity to the French, jufed to call us, in their war orations, bottuk ookfroofe, " The accurfed peo ple." But they flatter themfelves with the name bottuk oretoopab, The be loved people," becaufe their fuppofed anceftors, as they affirm, were under the immediate government of the Deity, who was prefent with them, in a

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