though asafœtida, or the devil’s dung, might have been much better. On
Cant. iv. 6. “I will get me to the hill of incense,” the Chaldee
paraphrast says, that, while the house of Israel kept the art of their
holy fore-fathers, both the morning and mid-day evil spirits fled
away, because the divine glory dwelt in the sanctuary, which was built
on Mount Moriah; and that all the devils fled when they smelled the
effluvia of the fine incense that was there. They likewise believed
that herbs and roots had a power to expel dæmons. And Josephus tells
us, that the root _Bara_, immediately drives out the devil. I suppose
it had such a physical power against fevers and agues, as the jesuit’s
bark.
The church of Rome, in order to have powerful holy things, as well as
the Jews, applies salt, spittle, holy-water, and consecrated oil, to
expel the devils from the credulous of their own persuasion; and the
oil alone is used as a viaticum, on account of its lubricous quality,
to make them slippery, and thereby prevent the devil from laying hold,
and pulling them down when they ascend upward. They reckon that
observance a most religious duty, and an infallible preservative
against the legions of evil spirits who watch in the aerial regions;
and also necessary to gain celestial admission for believers.
In the Summer-season of the year 1746, I chanced to see the Indians
playing at a house of the former Missisippi-Nachee,[76] on one of their
old sacred musical instruments. It pretty much resembled the
Negroe-Banger in shape, but far exceeded it in dimensions; for it was
about five feet long, and a foot wide on the head-part of the board,
with eight strings made out of the sinews of a large buffalo. But they
were so unskilful in acting the part of the Lyrick, that the _Loache_,
or prophet who held the instrument between his feet, and along side of
his chin, took one end of the bow, whilst a lusty fellow held the other;
by sweating labour they scraped out such harsh jarring sounds, as might
have been reasonably expected by a soft ear, to have been sufficient to
drive out the devil if he lay any where hid in the house. When I
afterward asked him the name, and the reason of such a strange method of
diversion, he told me the dance was called _Keetla Ishto Hoollo_, “a
dance to, or before, the great holy one;” that it kept off evil spirit,
witches, and wizards, from the red people; and enabled them to ordain
elderly men to officiate in holy things, as the exigency of the times
required.
He who danced to it, kept his place and posture, in a very exact manner,
without the least perceivable variation: yet by the prodigious working
of his muscles and nerves, he in about half an hour, foamed in a very
extraordinary manner, and discontinued it proportionally, till he
recovered himself. This surprising custom I have mentioned here, because
it was usual among the Hebrews, for their prophets to become furious,
and as it were beside themselves, when they were about to prophesy. Thus
with regard to Saul, it seems that he became furious, and tortured his
body by violent gestures: and when Elisha sent one of the children of
the prophets to anoint Jehu, one said to him, wherefore cometh this mad
fellow? The Chaldee paraphrast, on 1 Sam. xviii. 10. concerning Saul’s
prophesying, paraphrases it, cæpit furire, “he began to grow mad, &c.”
When the East-Indian Fakirs are giving out their pretended prophecies,
they chuse drums and trumpets, that by such confused striking sounds,
{175} their senses may be lulled asleep or unsettled, which might
otherwise render them uncapable of receiving the supposed divine
inspiration. And they endeavour to become thus possest before crowds of
people with a furious rage, by many frantic and violent motions of body,
and changes of posture, till they have raised it to the highest pitch
they are capable of, and then fall on the ground almost breathless; when
they recover themselves a little, they give out their prophecies, which
are deemed oracular.
Lactantius and others tell us, that the Sibyls were possest of the like
fury; and most part of the ancients believed they ought to become
furious, the members of the body to shake, and the hairs of their head
to stand an end before they could be divinely inspired: which seems
plainly to shew, that though the ancient heathens mimicked a great deal
of the Mosaic law, yet theirs had but a faint glance on the Hebrew
manner of consulting Yohewah; whereas the Indian Americans invoke the
true God, by his favourite essential name, in a bowing posture, on every
material occasion, whether civil, martial, or religious, contrary to the
usage of all the old heathen world.
In the year 1765, an old physician, or prophet, almost drunk with
spirituous liquors, came to pay me a friendly visit: his situation made
him more communicative than he would have been if quite sober. When he
came to the door, he bowed himself half bent, with his arms extended
north and south, continuing so perhaps for the space of a minute. Then
raising himself erect, with his arms in the same position, he looked in
a wild frightful manner, from the south-west toward the north, and sung
on a low bass key _Yo Yo Yo Yo_, almost a minute, then _He He He He_,
for perhaps the same space of time, and _Wa Wa Wa Wa_, in like manner;
and then transposed, and accented those sacred notes several different
ways, in a most rapid guttural manner. Now and then he looked upwards,
with his head considerably bent backward;—his song continued about a
quarter of an hour. As my door which was then open stood east, his face
of course looked toward the west; but whether the natives thus usually
invoke the deity, I cannot determine; yet as all their winter houses
have their doors toward the east, had he used the like solemn
invocations there, his face would have consequently looked the same way,
contrary to the usage of {176} the heathens. After his song, he stepped
in: I saluted him, saying, “Are you come my beloved old friend?” he
replied, _Arahre-O_. “I am come in the name of _OEA._” I told him, I was
glad to see, that in this mad age, he still retained the old Chikkasah
virtues. He said, that as he came with a glad heart to see me his old
friend, he imagined he could not do me a more kind service, than to
secure my house from the power of the evil spirits of the north, south,
and west,—and, from witches, and wizards, who go about in dark nights,
in the shape of bears, hogs, and wolves, to spoil people: “the very
month before, added he, we killed an old witch, for having used
destructive charms.” Because a child was suddenly taken ill, and died,
on the physician’s false evidence, the father went to the poor helpless
old woman who was sitting innocent, and unsuspecting, and sunk his
tomohawk into her head, without the least fear of being called to an
account. They call witches and wizards, _Ishtabe_, and _Hoollabe_,
“man-killers,” and “spoilers of things sacred.” My prophetic friend
desired me to think myself secure from those dangerous enemies of
darkness, for (said he) _Tarooa Ishtohoollo-Antarooare_, “I have sung
the song of the great holy one.” The Indians are so tenacious of
concealing their religious mysteries, that I never before observed such
an invocation on the like occasion—adjuring evil spirits, witches, &c.
by the awful name of deity.[77]
ARGUMENT XIX.
The Hebrews have at all times been very careful in the BURIAL of their
dead—to be deprived of it was considered as one of the greatest of
evils. They made it a point of duty to perform the funeral obsequies of
their friends—often embalmed the dead bodies of those who were rich, and
even buried treasure in the tombs with their dead. Josephus tells us,
that in king David’s sepulchre, was buried such a prodigious quantity of
treasures, that Hyrcanus the Maccabean, took three thousand talents out
of it, about thirteen hundred years after, to get rid of Antiochus then
besieging Jerusalem. And their people of distinction, we are told,
followed the like custom of burying gold and silver with the dead. Thus
it was an universal custom with the ancient Peruvians, when the owner
died to bury his {177} effects with him, which the avaricious Spaniards
perceiving, they robbed these store-houses of the dead of an immense
quantity of treasures. The modern Indians bury all their moveable
riches, according to the custom of the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans,
insomuch, that the grave is heir of all.
Except the Cheerake, only one instance of deviation, from this ancient
and general Indian custom occurs to me: which was that of _Malahche_,
the late famous chieftain of the _Kowwetah_ head war-town of the lower
part of the Muskohge country, who bequeathed all he possessed to his
real, and adopted relations,—being sensible they would be much more
useful to his living friends, than to himself during his long sleep: he
displayed a genius far superior to the crowd.
The Cheerake of late years, by the reiterated persuasion of the traders,
have entirely left off the custom of burying effects with the dead body;
the nearest of blood inherits them. They, and several other of our
Indian nations, used formerly to shoot all the live stock that belonged
to the deceased, soon after the interment of the corpse; not according
to the Pagan custom of the funeral piles, on which they burned several
of the living, that they might accompany and wait on the dead, but from
a narrow-hearted avaricious principle, derived from their Hebrew
progenitors.
Notwithstanding the North-American Indians, like the South-Americans,
inter the whole riches of the deceased with him, and so make his corpse
and the grave heirs of all, they never give them the least disturbance;
even a blood-thirsty enemy will not despoil nor disturb the dead. The
grave proves an asylum, and a sure place of rest to the sleeping person,
till at some certain time, according to their opinion, he rises again to
inherit his favourite place,—unless the covetous, or curious hand of
some foreigner, should break through his sacred bounds. This custom of
burying the dead person’s treasures with him, has entirely swallowed up
their medals, and other monuments of antiquity, without any probability
of recovering them[XLV]. {178}
Footnote XLV:
In the Tuccabatches on the Tallapoose river, thirty miles above the
Allabahamah garrison, are two brazen tables, and five of copper. They
esteem them so sacred as to keep them constantly in their holy of
holies, without touching them in the least, only in the time of their
compounded first-fruit-offering, and annual expiation of sins; at
which season, their magus carries one under his arm, a-head of the
people, dancing round the sacred arbour; next to him their
head-warrior carries another; and those warriors who chuse it, carry
the rest after the manner of the high-priest; all the others carry
white canes with swan-feathers at the top. Hearing accidentally of
these important monuments of antiquity, and enquiring pretty much
about them, I was certified of the truth of the report by four of the
southern traders, at the most eminent Indian-trading house of all
English America. One of the gentlemen informed me, that at my request
he endeavoured to get a liberty of viewing the aforesaid tables, but
it could not possibly be obtained, only in the time of the yearly
grand sacrifice, for fear of polluting their holy things, at which
time gentlemen of curiosity may see them. _Old Bracket_, an Indian of
perhaps 100 years old, lives in that old beloved town, who gave the
following description of them:
[Illustration: image]
_Old Bracket’s_ account of the _five copper_ and _two brass plates_
under the beloved cabbin in Tuccabatchey-square.
The shape of the five copper plates; one is a foot and half long and
seven inches wide, the other four are shorter and narrower.
The largest stamped thus [Illustration: i_188b] The shape of the two
brass plates,—about a foot and a half in diameter.
He said—he was told by his forefathers that those plates were given to
them by the man we call God; that there had been many more of other
shapes, some as long as he could stretch with both his arms, and some
had writing upon them which were buried with particular men; and that
they had instructions given with them, viz. they must only be handled
by particular people, and those fasting; and no unclean woman must be
suffered to come near them or the place where they are deposited. He
said, none but this town’s people had any such plates given them, and
that they were a different people from the Creeks. He only remembered
three more, which were buried with three of his family, and he was the
only man of the family now left. He said, there were two copper plates
under the king’s cabbin, which had lain there from the first settling
of the town.
This account was taken in the Tuccabatchey-square, 27th July, 1759,
per _Will. Bolsover_. (A) It was at this town, the great Shawnee
leader, Tecumseh, delivered orations against the Americans and their
government which led the Upper Creeks to rise in arms (1813), and
finally to the Creek War. The same plates are referred to in C. Swan’s
Account in Schoolcraft’s _Information Indian Tribes_, V, 283. (W)
As the Hebrews carefully buried their dead, so on any accident, they
gathered their bones and laid them in the tombs of their
fore-fathers:[78] Thus, all the numerous nations of Indians perform the
like friendly office to every deceased person of their respective tribe;
insomuch, that those who {179} lose their people at war, if they have
not corrupted their primitive customs, are so observant of this kindred
duty, as to appropriate some time to collect the bones of their
relations; which they call _bone gathering_, or “gathering the bones to
their kindred,” according to the Hebrew idiom[XLVI]. The Cheerake, by
reason of their great intercourse with foreigners, have dropped that
friendly office: and as they seem to be more intelligent than the rest
of our English-American Indians in their religious rites, and ceremonial
observances, so I believe, the fear of pollution has likewise
contributed to obliterate that ancient kindred duty. However, they
separate those of their people who die at home, from others of a
different nation; and every particular tribe indeed of each nation bears
an intense love to itself, and divides every one of its people from the
rest, both while living, and after they are dead.
Footnote XLVI:
With the Hebrews, “to gather,” usually signified to die. Gen. xlix.
33. Jacob is said to be gathered to his people. Psal. xxvi. 9. Gather
not my soul with sinners. And Numb. xx. 24. Aaron shall be gathered to
his people.
When any of them die at a distance, if the company be not driven and
pursued by the enemy, they place the corpse on a scaffold,[79] covered
with notched logs to secure it from being torn by wild beasts, or fowls
of prey: when they imagine the flesh is consumed, and the bones are
thoroughly dried, they return to the place, bring them home, and inter
them in a very solemn manner. They will not associate with us, when we
are burying any of our people, who die in their land: and they are
unwilling we should join with them while they are performing this
kindred duty to theirs. Upon which account, though I have lived among
them in the raging time of the small pox, even of the confluent sort, I
never saw but one buried, who was a great favourite of the English, and
chieftain of _Ooeasa_, as formerly described.
The Indians use the same ceremonies to the bones of their dead, as if
they were covered with their former skin, flesh, and ligaments. It is
but a few days since I saw some return with the bones of nine of their
people, who had been two months before killed by the enemy. They were
tied in white deer-skins, separately; and when carried by the door of
one of the houses of their family, they were laid down opposite to it,
till the female {180} relations convened, with flowing hair, and wept
over them about half an hour. Then they carried them home to their
friendly magazines of mortality, wept over them again, and then buried
them with the usual solemnities; putting their valuable effects, and as
I am informed, other convenient things in along with them, to be of
service to them in the next state. The chieftain carried twelve short
sticks tied together, in the form of a quadrangle; so that each square
consisted of three. The sticks were only peeled, without any paintings;
but there were swans feathers tied to each corner, and as they called
that frame, _Tereekpe tobeh_, “a white circle,” and placed it over the
door, while the women were weeping over the bones, perhaps it was
originally designed to represent the holy fire, light, and spirit, who
formerly presided over the four principal standards of the twelve tribes
of Israel.
When any of their people die at home, they wash and anoint the corpse,
and soon bring it out of doors for fear of pollution; then they place it
opposite to the door, on the skins of wild beasts, in a sitting posture,
as looking into the door of the winter house, westward, sufficiently
supported with all his moveable goods; after a short elogium, and space
of mourning, they carry him three times around the house in which he is
to be interred, stopping half a minute each time, at the place where
they began the circle, while the religious man of the deceased person’s
family, who goes before the hearse, says each time, _Yàh_, short with a
bass voice, and then invokes on a tenor key, _Yo_, which at the same
time is likewise sung by all the procession, as long as one breath
allows. Again, he strikes up, on a sharp treble key, the fœminine note,
_He_, which in like manner, is taken up and continued by the rest: then
all of them suddenly strike off the solemn chorus, and sacred
invocation, by saying, on a low key, _Wàh_; which constitute the divine
essential name, _Yohewah_. This is the method in which they performed
the funeral rites of the chieftain before referred to; during which
time, a great many of the traders were present, as our company was
agreeable at the interment of our declared patron and friend. It seems
as if they buried him in the name of the divine essence, and directed
their plaintive religious notes to the author of life and death, in
hopes of a resurrection of the body; which hope engaged the Hebrews to
stile their burying places, “the house of the living.” {181}
When they celebrated these funeral rites of the above chieftain, they
laid the corpse in his tomb, in a sitting posture, with his face towards
the east, his head anointed with bear’s oil, and his face painted red,
but not streaked with black, because that is a constant emblem of war
and death; he was drest in his finest apparel, having his gun and pouch,
and trusty hiccory bow, with a young panther’s skin, full of arrows,
along side of him, and every other useful thing he had been possessed
of,—that when he rises again, they may serve him in that tract of land
which pleased him best before he went to take his long sleep. His tomb
was firm and clean in-side. They covered it with thick logs, so as to
bear several tiers of cypress-bark, and such a quantity of clay as would
confine the putrid smell, and be on a level with the rest of the floor.
They often sleep over those tombs; which, with the loud wailing of the
women at the dusk of the evening, and dawn of the day, on benches close
by the tombs, must awake the memory of their relations very often: and
if they were killed by an enemy, it helps to irritate and set on such
revengeful tempers to retaliate blood for blood.
The Egyptians either embalmed, or buried, their dead: other heathen
nations imagined that fire purified the body; they burned therefore the
bodies of their dead, and put their ashes into small urns, which they
religiously kept by them, as sacred relicks. The Tartars called
_Kyrgessi_, near the frozen sea, formerly used to hang their dead
relations and friends upon trees, to be eaten by ravenous birds to
purify them. But the Americans seem evidently to have derived their copy
from the Israelites, as to the place where they bury their dead, and the
method of their funeral ceremonies, as well as the persons with whom
they are buried, and the great expenses they are at in their burials.
The Hebrews buried near the city of Jerusalem, by the brook Kedron; and
they frequently hewed their tombs out of rocks, or buried their dead
opposite to their doors, implying a silent lesson of friendship, and a
pointing caution to live well. They buried all of one family together;
to which custom David alludes, when he says, “gather me not with the
wicked:” and Sophronius said with regard to the like form, “noli me
tangere, hæretice, neque vivum nec mortuum.” But they buried strangers
apart by themselves, and named the place, _Kebhare Galeya_, “the burying
place of strangers.” And these rude Americans are so strongly partial to
the same custom, that they imagine if any of us {182} were buried in the
domestic tombs of their kindred, without being adopted, it would be very
criminal in them to allow it; and that our spirits would haunt the eaves
of their houses at night, and cause several misfortunes to their family.
In resemblance to the Hebrew custom of embalming their dead, the Choktah
treat the corpse just as the religious Levite did his beloved concubine,
who was abused by the Benjamites; for having placed the dead on a high
scaffold stockaded round, at the distance of twelve yards from his house
opposite to the door, the whole family convene there at the beginning of
the fourth moon after the interment, to lament and feast together: after
wailing a while on the mourning benches, which stand on the east side of
the quadrangular tomb, they raise and bring out the corpse, and while
the feast is getting ready, a person whose office it is, and properly
called the bone-picker, dissects it, as if it was intended for the
shambles in the time of a great famine, with his sharp-pointed, bloody
knife. He continues busily employed in his reputed sacred office, till
he has finished the task, and scraped all the flesh off the bones; which
may justly be called the Choktah method of enbalming their dead. Then,
they carefully place the bones in a kind of small chest, in their
natural order, that they may with ease and certainty be some time
afterward reunited, and proceed to strike up a song of lamentation, with
various wailing tunes and notes: afterwards, they join as cheerfully in
the funeral feast, as if their kinsman was only taking his usual sleep.
Having regaled themselves with a plentiful variety, they go along with
those beloved relicks of their dead, in solemn procession, lamenting
with doleful notes, till they arrive at the bone-house, which stands in
a solitary place, apart from the town: then they proceed around it, much
after the manner of those who performed the obsequies of the Chikkasah
chieftain, already described, and there deposit their kinsman’s bones to
lie along side of his kindred-bones, till in due time they are revived
by _Ishtohoollo Aba_, that he may repossess his favourite place.
Those bone-houses are scaffolds raised on durable pitch-pine forked
posts, in the form of a house covered a-top, but open at both ends. I
saw three of them in one of their towns, pretty near each other—the
place seemed to be unfrequented; each house contained the bones of one
tribe, {183} separately, with the hieoglyphical figures of the family on
each of the old-shaped arks: they reckon it irreligious to mix the bones
of a relation with those of a stranger, as bone of bone, and flesh of
the same flesh, should be always joined together; and much less will
they thrust the body of their beloved kinsman into the abominable tomb
of a hateful enemy. I observed a ladder fixed in the ground, opposite to
the middle of the broad side of each of those dormitories of the dead,
which was made out of a broad board, and stood considerably bent over
the sacred repository, with the steps on the inside. On the top was the
carved image of a dove, with its wings stretched out, and its head
inclining down, as if earnestly viewing or watching over the bones of
the dead: and from the top of the ladder to almost the surface of the
earth, there hung a chain of grape-vines twisted together, in circular
links, and the same likewise at their domestic tombs. Now the dove after
the deluge, became the emblem of _Rowah_, the holy spirit, and in
process of time was deified by the heathen world, instead of the divine
person it typified: the vine was likewise a symbol of fruitfulness, both
in the animal and vegetable world.