Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/89

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name, the Indians, as an explicative, term their paffover, which the trading people call the green-corn dance. As the Ifraelites were a fenfual people, and generally underftood nothing but the lhadow, or literal part of the law ; fo the Indians clofely imitate them, minding only that traditional part, which promifed them a delicious land, flowing with milk and honey. The two Jewifh months juft mentioned, were sequinoctial. Abib, or their prefent Nifan, was the feventh of the civil, and the firft of the ecclefiaftical year, anfwering to our March and April : and Ethanim, which began the civil year, was the feventh of that of the ecclefiaftical, the fame as our September and October. And the Indians name the various feafons of the year, from the planting, or ripening of the fruits. The green-eared moon is the moft beloved, or facred, when the firft fruits become fanctified, by being an nually offered up. And from this period they count their beloved, or holy things.

When -they lack a- full moon, or when they travel, they count by fleeps; which is a very ancient cuftom probably, from the Mofaic method of counting time, " that the evening and the morning were the firft day." Quantity they count by tens, the number of their fingers; which is a natural method to all people. In the mercantile way, they mark on the ground their numbers, by units ; or by X for ten, which, I prefume they learned from the white people, who traded with them. They readily add together their tens, and find out the number fought. They call it Takd-ne Tldpba, or " fcoring on the ground." But old time they can no way trace, only by remarkable circumftances, and asras. As they trade with each other, only by the hand, they have no proper name for a pound weight.

The Cheerake count as high as an hundred, by various numeral names ; whereas the other nations of Eaft and Weft-Florida, rife no higher than the decimal number, adding units after it, by a conjunction copulative-, which intimates, that nation was either more mixed, or more fkilrul, than the reft : the latter feems moft probable. They call a thouiund, i>kceb : Cbooke Kaiere y " the old," or " the old one's hundred :" and fo do the reft, in their various dialects, by interpretation ; which argues their former fkill in numbers.

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