OCR Text |
Show THE PRESENT STATE abstinence from unclean things. OF 13. Their marriages, divorces and punishments of adultery. 14. Their several punishments. 15. Their cities of refuge. 16, Their purifications and preparatory cermonies. 17. Their ornaments. 18. Their manner of curing the sick. 19. Their burial of their dead. — 20. Their mourning for their dead. deceased brother. to their 21. Their raising seed toa 22. Their change of names adapted circumstances and times. 23. Their own traditions; the accounts of Inghsh writers; and the testimonies given by Spanish and other writers of the rimitive inhabitants of Mexico and Peru. | Some of his illustrations of these arguments wi:l be here subiojned in his own words. Under the Ist argument. “As the nation hath its particular symbol, SO each tribe, the badge from which it is denominated. The sachem of each tribe is a necessary party in con- veyances, and treaties, to which he affixes the mark of his tribe.- If we go from nation to nation among them, we shall not find one, who doth not lineally distinguish himself by his respective family. The genealogical -names, which they assume, are derived either from the name of those animals, whereof the cherubims are said in revelation to be compounded, or from such creaturesas are most familiar to them. ‘The Indians, however, bear no religious respect to the animals from On the contrary, whence they derive their names. When we serves. they kill them when opportunity twenty above consider that these savages have been centuries without the use of letters to carry down their traditions, it cannot reasonably be expected that they should still retain the identical names of thei ‘Their main primogenial tribes. custoins alee ding with those of the Israelites, sufficiently eg Besides, as hath been hinted, they Cal core ) subject. of their tribes by the names of cherubinical figures four principal standards ol os His illustrations of the second argument, blended with those of many others, have been subicien iy 21Y- that were Israel, carried on the af ¥4 én. vAr or JUDAH AND Under the third argument, ISRAEL. he says: ‘ Agreeably to the theocracy or divine government of Israel, the Indians think the Deity to be the immediate head of their state. All the nations of Indians are exceedingly intoxicated with religious pride, and have an inexpressible contempt of the white people.* They used to cail usin their war orations, the accursed people.— But they flatter themselves with the name of the belov- ed people ; because their supposed ancestors, as they afhirm, were under the immediate government of the Deity, who was present with them ina very peculiar manner, and directed them by prophets, while the rest of the world were aliens and outlaws to the covenant. —-When the old Archimagus, or any one of their magi, is persuading the people at any one of their religious solemnities toa strict observance of the old beloved or divine speech, he always calls them the beloved or holy people, agreeably to the Hebrew epithet, Am- : mi (my people) during the theocracy of Israel.—It is’ {Pod their opinion of the theocracy, that God chose them, out of all the rest of mankind as his peculiar and be-' loved people; which alike animates both the white: Jew and the red American with that steady hatred against all the world except themselves ; and renders them (in their opinion) hated and despised by all.” His illustrations of the 4th and 5th arguments have been given with those of other authors. _ Under the 6th argument he\says: “ They count time after the manner of the Hebrews. They divide the year into spring, summer, autumn, and winter, Chey number their year from.any of those four periods, for they have no name for a year, and they subdivide these, and count the year by lunar months, like the Israelites, who counted by moons. They begin year at the first appearance of the first new moon a of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. ‘Till the 70 years Captivity, the Israelites had ouly numeral names for the solar and lunar months, ted, Within 20 years this trait of Indian character is much meliora- 43° |