when the ice was gone. When this happened we told them they must now go with their big canoes; but they pointed their big guns round their wigwams, and said they would stay there and we could not make them go away. Afterwards others came. They brought spirituous and intoxicating liquors with them, of which the Indians became very fond. They persuaded us to sell them some land. Finally they drove us back from time to time into the wilderness far from the water, and the fish, and the oysters: they have destroyed our game; our people have wasted away, and now we live miserable and wretched, while you are enjoying our fine and beautiful country. This makes me sorry, Brother, and I cannot help it."

They have above all things regretted the introduction of spirituous liquors among them, which with reason no doubt they regard as the greatest evil that has befallen them ; and the first and most decisive article in all their late treaties has been, that there shall not be any of it brought into their towns or sold to their people. The traders are allowed to carry enough for their own use, and what they do not consume must be thrown on the ground. Two young traders were met carrying forty kegs of Jamaica spirits into the Creek country by some of the natives, who immediately struck their tomahawks into every keg and let the liquor run out, without drinking a drop of it. This was a great instance of self denial; for it is said, their fondness for it is so great, that, had they indulged in tasting it, nothing could have prevented them from drinking the whole of it.

In the third report of the United Missionary Society it

is stated, "that the aged men, on hearing the children repeat the instructions given them in the school, were much pleased and said; "Now this is good talk. It resembles the talk which the old people used to make to us when we were little children; but alas! the wicked white men have rooted it out of our nation. We are glad the Great Spirit has sent these good Missionaries to bring it back to us again."

After some Missionaries had made known the object of their visit, the aged wife of one of their chiefs who was present made the following remark. "We have always understood, that at some time good people are to come, and teach us the right way; how do we know but these are those good people come to teach us ?”

CHAPTER IV.

OF RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS RITES.

WHEN Mr. Penn had landed on the American

manners.

shores and had held his first intercourse with the Natives of it, he was exceedingly struck with their appearance and He found them very different from any people he had met with any where else, and thought them unlike any nation he had read of. He saw them in their state of native purity, undebased by slavery and uncontaminated with the vices of Europeans. In a letter to his friends in England he wrote, "I found them with countenances much like the Jewish race; and their children have so lively a resemblance of them, that a man would think himself in Duke's Place or Berry Street, in London, when he seeth them."

"They wore ear-rings and nose jewels; bracelets on their arms and legs, rings on their fingers, necklaces made of highly polished shells found in their rivers and on their coasts. The females tied up their hair behind, worked pands round their heads, and ornamented them with shells

and feathers, and wore strings of beads round several parts of their bodies. Round their mocasins they had shells and turkey spurs, to tinkle like little bells as they walked.”

Ofthese things we read among the fantastic peculiarities of the Hebrew women in the days of their degeneracy, Isa. 3, 18. "In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon': the chains and the bracelets and the muflers: the bonnets and the ornaments of the legs, and the hand-bands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings: the rings and the nose jewels." "The common dress was a flannel garment or mantle ornamented on the upper edge by a narrow strip of fur, and at the lower edge by fringes or tassels. Over this, which reached below the knee, was worn a small cloak of the same materials, likewise fringed at the lower part;" which reminds us of the fringes and tassels worn by the Jews on their garments. They were then in the careful observance of certain religious feasts, which bore a remarkable likeness to those of the ancient Hebrews. Indeed many of the early visitors of this hitherto unknown country and most of the serious and intelligent part of the settlers, who paid attention to the. people and to their customs, both Spaniards and Englishmen, made their remarks upon the general likeness they bore to the Jews; without unfortunately entering farther into the question, of the quarter from whence they sprang. Speaking of religion, Father Charlevoix observes. "Nothing has undergone more sudden, frequent and surprising revolutions, than religion. When once men have abandoned the only true one, they

soon loose sight of it,

and find themselves entangled in such a labyrinth of incoherent errors, inconsistencies and contradictions, that there often remains not the smallest clue to lead us back to the truth. The Buccaniers of St. Domingo, who professed to be christians, but who had no intercourse except with one another, in less than thirty years, through the want of religious worship, instruction and an authority that might keep them to their duty, had lost all marks of christianity except baptism alone. Had those people continued only to the third generation, their grand-children would have been as void of christianity as the inhabitants of TerraAustralis, or New Guinea. They might, possibly, have preserved some ceremonies, the meaning and origin of which they could not explain."

The Israelites were carried captive about seven hundred years before the Christian era, and may have remained under the controul of their conquerors for two or three hundred years. We shall in a future chapter enquire about what period their escape from Media may have been accomplished; but, making every allowance that time and circumstances seem to require, it must have been nearly two thousand years after that escape, that these numerous and singular tribes were discovered on the American Continent. What surprising changes may not have taken place among them, or many parts of them, during that long term of years! Without government, without laws, without any head but the head of the family, or of a small associated tribe, or any will but that of the patriarchal chief; with an unlimited range over an immense continent, rich in natural Produce, and abounding in Game and