these points proved at large in the aforesaid dissertation, against the objections of Deists, and the whimsical notions of Whiston, in his dissertation upon the curses denounced against Cain and Lamech, pretending to prove that the Africans and Indians are their posterity. See Butler's Lives of the Saints.

We quote the following on the same subject, from an Account of the American Indians, by James Adair, Esq. a trader with the Indians, and resident in the country for forty years.

"FROM the most exact observation," says he, " that I could make, in the long time I traded among the Indian Americans, I was forced to believe them lineally descended from the Israelites, either while they were a maritime power, or soon after the general captivity; the latter, however, is the most probable. Had the nine tribes and a half of Israel, which were carried off by Shalmanezer king of Assyria, and settled in Media, continued there long, it is very probable, by intermarrying with the natives, and from their natural fickleness and proneness to idolatry, and the force of example, that they would have adopted and bowed before the gods of the Medes and Assyrians, and have carried them along with them: but there is not a trace of this idolatry among the Indians." Hence he argues, that those of the ten tribes, who were the forefathers of the Americans, soon advanced eastward from Assyria, and reached their settlements in the new continent before the destruction of the first temple.

In proof of the Americans being thus descended, he adduces the following arguments. 1. Their division into tribes. 2. Their worship of Jehovah. 3. Their notions of a theocracy. 4. Their belief in the ministration of angels. 5. Their language and dialects. 6. Their manner of counting time. 7! Their prophets and high-priests. 8. Their festivals, fasts, and religious rites. 9. Their daily sacrifice. 10. Their ablutions, and anointings. 11. Their laws of uncleanness. 12. Their abstinence from unclean things. 13. Their marriages, divorces, and punishment of adultery. 14. Their several punishments. 15. Their cities of refuge. 16. Their purifications, and ceremonies preparatory. 17. Their ornaments. 18. Their manner of curing the sick. 19. Their burial of their dead. 20. Their mourning for their dead. 21. Their raising seed to a deceased brother. 22. Their choice of names adapted to their circumstances and the times. 23. Their own traditions; the accounts of our English writers; and the testimonies, which the Spanish and other writers have given, concerning the primitive inhabitants of Peru and Mexico.

A few extracts from what is said under these different heads may not be unacceptable.

1. "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 conveyances 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 names of those animals whereof the Cherubim are said in revelation to be compounded, or from such creatures as are most similar to them. The Indians, however, bear no religious respect to the animals from whence they derive their name: on the contrary, they kill them when opportunity serves. When we consider that these savages have been above twenty 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 their primogenial tribes: their main customs, corresponding with those of the Israelites, sufficiently clear the subject. Besides, as hath been hinted, they call some of their tribes by the names of the cherubinical figures that were carried on the four principal standards of Israel.

2. "By a strict, permanent, divine precept, the Hebrew nation were ordered to worship, at Jerusalem, Jehovah the true and living God, who by the Indians is styled Yohewah; which the 72 interpreters, either from ignorance or superstition, have translated Adonai, the very same as the Greek Kyrios, signifying Sir, Lord, or Master, which is commonly applied to earthly potentates, without the least signification or relation to that most great and awful name which describes the divine essence.

3. "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 for the white people. They used to call us, in their war orations, the accursed people: but they flatter themselves with the name of the beloved people; because their supposed ancestors, as they affirm, were under the immediate government of the Deity, who was present with them in a 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 their religious solemnities to a strict observance of the old beloved or divine speech, he always calls them the beloved or holy people, agreeably to the Hebrew epithet Ammi, (my people,) during the theocracy of Israel. It is their opinion of the theocracy, or that God chose them out of all the rest of mankind as his peculiar and beloved people, which alike animates both the white Ĵew and the red American with that steady hatred against all the world except themselves, and renders them hated or despised by all.

5. "The Indian language and dialects appear to have the very idiom and genius of the Hebrew. Their words and sentences are

expressive, concise, emphatical, sonorous, and bold; and often, both in letters and signification, are synonymous with the Hebrew language." Here follows a number of examples.

6. "They count time after the manner of the Hebrews. They divide the year into spring, summer, autumn, and winter. They 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, as their name sufficiently testifies. The number and regular periods of the Indians' religious feasts is a good historical proof, that they counted time by, and observed, a weekly sabbath, long after their arrival on the American continent. They began the year at the first appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. Till the 70 years captivity commenced, the Israelites had only numeral names for the solar and lunar months, except Abib and Ethanim: the former signifies a green ear of corn; and the latter robust or valiant: and by the first name the Indians, as an explicative, term their passover, which the trading people call the green corn dance." He then gives a specimen of the Hebrew manner of counting, in order to prove its similarity to that of the Indians.

7. In conformity to, or after the manner of the Jews, the Indian Americans have their prophets, high-priests, and others of a religious order. As the Jews had a sanctum sanctorum, so have all the Indian nations. There they deposite their consecrated vessels; none of the laity daring to approach that sacred place. The Indian tradition says, that their forefathers were possessed of an extraordinary divine spirit, by which they foretold things future, and controlled the common course of nature: and this they transmitted to their offspring, provided they obeyed the sacred laws annexed to it. Ishtoallo is the name of all their priestly order; and their pontifical office descends by inheritance to the eldest. There are some traces of agreement, though chiefly lost, in their pontifical dress. Before the Indian Archimagus officiates in making the supposed holy fire for the yearly atonement of sin, the Sagan clothes him with a white ephod, which is a waistcoat without sleeves. In resemblance of the Urim and Thummim, the American Archimagus wears a breastplate made of a white conch-shell with two holes bored in the middle of it, through which he puts the ends of an otter-skin strap, and fastens a buck-horn white button to the outside of each, as if in imitation of the precious stones of the Urim."

Upon this statement, (says Faber,) I may observe, that Ishtoallo may perhaps be a corruption of Ish-da-Eloah, a man of God; (See 2 Kings iv. 21, 22, 25, 27, 40, et alibi;) and that Sagan is the very name, by which the Hebrews called the deputy of the High-Priest, who supplied his office, and who performed the functions of it, in the absence of the High-Priest, or when any accident had disabled him from officiating in person. (See Calmet's Dict. Vox Sagan.)

8. "The ceremonies of the Indians in their religious worship are more after the Mosaick institution, than of pagan imitation; which could not be, if the majority of the old nation were of heathenish descent. They are utter strangers to all the gestures practised by the pagans in their religious rites. They have another appellative, which with them is the mysterious essential name of God; the tetragrammaton, or great four-lettered name, which they never name in common speech: of the time, and place, when, and where, they mention it, they are very particular, and always with a solemn air. It is well known what sacred regard the Jews had to the four-lettered divine name, so as scarcely ever to mention it, but once a year, when the High-Priest went into the sanctuary at the expiation of sins. Might not the Indians copy from them this sacred invocation Yo-He-Wah? Their method of invoking God in a solemn hymn with that reverential deportment, and spending a full breath on each of the two first syllables of the awful divine name, hath a surprising analogy to the Jewish custom, and such as no other nation or people, even with the advantage of written records, have retained. It may be worthy of notice, that they never prostrate themselves, nor bow their bodies to each other, by way of salute or homage, though usual with the eastern nations; except when they are making, or renewing peace with strangers, who come in the name of Yah." After speaking of their sacred adjuration by the great and awful name of God, he says: "When we consider, that the period of the adjurations, according to their idiom, only asks a question, and that the religious waiters say Yah with a profound reverence in a bowing posture of body immediately before they invoke Yo-He-Wah; the one reflects so much light upon the other, as to convince me that the Hebrews both invoked and pronounced the divine tetragrammaton Yo-He-Wah, and adjured their witnesses to give true evidence on certain occasions according to the Indian usage: otherwise, how could they possibly, in a savage state, have a custom so nice and strong pointing to a standard of religious caution? It seems exactly to coincide with the conduct of the Hebrew witnesses even now, on the like religious occasions." According to Mr. Adair, the American Indians have, like the Hebrews, a sacred ark, in which are kept various holy vessels. "It is highly worthy of notice, that they never place the ark on the ground, nor sit on the bare earth while they are carrying it against the enemy. On hilly ground where stones are plenty, they place it on them; but, in a level land, upon short logs, always resting themselves on the like materials. They have also as strong a faith of the power and holiness of their ark, as ever the Israelites retained of theirs. The Indian ark is deemed so sacred and dangerous to be touched, either by their own sanctified warriours, or the spoiling enemy, that they dare not touch it upon any account. It is not to be meddled with by any, except the chieftain and his waiter, under penalty of incurring great evil: nor would the most inveterate enemy touch it, for the same reason.

The leader virtually acts the part of a priest of war pro-tempore, in imitation of the Israelites fighting under the divine military banner. As religion is the touchstone of every nation of people; and as these Indians cannot be supposed to have been deluded out of theirs, separated from the rest of the world for many long forgotten ages, the traces, which may be discerned among them, will help to corroborate the other arguments concerning their origin." Among their other religious rites, they cut out the sinewy part of the thigh. This custom Mr. Adair supposes to be commemorative of the angel wrestling with Jacob. Gen. xxxii. 32.

12. "Eagles of every kind they esteem unclean food; likewise ravens, crows, bats, buzzards, swallows, and every species of owl. They believe, that swallowing flies, gnats, and the like, always breeds sickness. To this that divine sarcasm alludes, “swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat." Their purifications for their priests, and for having touched a dead body or other unclean things, are, according to Mr. Adair, quite Levitical. He acknowledges, however, that they have no traces of circumcision; but thinks that they lost this rite in their wanderings, as it ceased during the 40 years in the wilderness.

15. "The Israelites had cities of refuge for those who killed a person unawares. According to the same particular divine law of mercy, each of these Indian nations has either a house or town of refuge, which is a sure asylum to protect a man-slayer, or the unfortunate captive, if they can once enter into it. In almost every Indian nation there are several peaceable towns, called old beloved ancient, holy, or white towns. They seem to have been formerly towns of refuge: for it is not in the memory of their oldest people that ever-human blood was shed in them, although they ofter force persons from thence and put them to death elsewhere.

16. Before the Indians go to war, they have many preparatory ceremonies of purification and fasting, like what is recorded of the Israelites.

21. The surviving brother, by the Mosaick law, was to rais seed to a deceased brother, who left a widow childless. The I dian custom looks the very same way: yet it is in this, as in thei law of blood, the eldest brother can redeem.

23. "Although other resemblances of the Indian rites and cus toms to those of the Hebrews might be pointed out, not to seer tedious, I proceed to the last argument of the origin of the India Americans; which shall be from their own traditions, from th accounts of our English writers, and from the testimonies whic the Spanish writers have given concerning the primitive inhabi ants of Peru and Mexico.

"The Indian tradition says, that their forefathers in very r mote ages came from a far distant country, where all the peop were of one colour; and that, in process of time, they moved eas ward to their present settlements. So that what some of our write have asserted, is not just, who say the Indians affirm, that the