or policy; and yet he affirms a few pages after, that they believed in
one true, immortal and invisible God, reigning in heaven, called
_Yocahuuagnamaorocoti_; and is so kind as to allow them images, priests,
and popes, their high-priest being called _papa_ in that language. The
origin of images among them, is accounted for in a dialogue he gives us,
between a shaking tree and one of the Indian priests: after a great deal
of discourse, the tree ordered the priest to cut it down, and taught him
how to make images thereof, and erect a temple. The tree was obeyed, and
every year their votaries solemnized the dedication. The good man has
{204} laboured very hard for the images, and ought to have suitable
applause for so useful an invention; as it shews the universal opinion
of mankind, concerning idols and images. With regard to that long
conjectural divine name, by which they expressed the one true God, there
is not the least room to doubt, that the South-Americans had the divine
name, _Yohewah_, in as great purity as those of the north, especially,
as they were at the fountain head; adding to it occasionally some other
strong compound words.
He says also, that the metropolis of Cholola had as many temples as
there were days in the year; and that one of them was the most famous in
the world, the basis of the spire being as broad as a man could shoot
with a cross bow, and the spire itself three miles high. The temples
which the holy man speaks of, seem to have been only the dwelling-houses
of strangers, who incorporated with the natives, differing a little in
their form of structure, according to the usual custom of our northern
Indians: and his religious principles not allowing him to go near the
reputed shambles of the devil, much less to enter the supposed
territories of hell, he has done pretty well by them, in allowing them
golden suns and moons—vestry keepers, &c. The badness of his optic
instruments, if joined with the supposed dimness of his sight, may plead
in excuse for the spiral altitude, which he fixes at 15,480 feet; for
from what we know of the northern Indians, we ought to strike off the
three first figures of its height, and the remaining 40 is very likely
to have been the just height of the spire, alias the red-painted, great,
_war-pole_.
The same writer tells us, that the Peruvian pontifical office belonged
to the eldest son of the king, or some chief lord of the country: and
that it devolved by succession. But he anoints him after a very solemn
manner, with an ointment which he carefully mixes with the blood of
circumcised infants. This priest of war dealing so much in blood
himself, without doubt, suspected them of the like; though at the same
time no Indian priest will either shed, or touch human blood: but that
they formerly circumcised, may with great probability be allowed to the
holy man.
The temples of Peru were built on high grounds, or tops of hills, he
says, and were surrounded with four circular mounds of earth, the one
rising {205} gradually above the other, from the outermost circle; and
that the temple stood in the center of the inclosed ground, built in a
quadrangular form, having altars, &c. He has officiously obtruded the
sun into it; perhaps, because he thought it dark within. He describes
another religious house, on the eastern part of that great inclosure,
facing the rising sun, to which they ascended by six steps, where, in
the hollow of a thick wall, lay the image of the sun, &c. This thick
wall having an hollow part within it, was no other than their sanctum
sanctorum, conformably to what I observed, concerning the pretended
holiest place of the Muskohge Indians. Any one who is well acquainted
with the language, rites, and customs of the North-American Indians, can
see with a glance when these monkish writers stumble on a truth, or
ramble at large.
Acosta says, that the Mexicans observed their chief feast in the month
of May, and that the nuns two days before mixed a sufficient quantity of
beets with honey, and made an image of it. He trims up the idol very
genteelly, and places it on an azure-coloured chair, every way becoming
the scarlet-coloured pope. He soon after introduces flutes, drums,
cornets, and trumpets, to celebrate the feast of _Eupania Vitzliputzli_,
as he thinks proper to term it: on account of the nuns, he gives them
_Pania_, “feminine bread,” instead of the masculine _Panis_; which he
makes his nuns to distribute at this love-feast, to the young men, in
large pieces resembling great bones. When they receive them, they
religiously lay them down at the feast of the idol, and call them the
flesh and bones of the God _Vitzliputzli_.
Then he brings in the priests vailed, with garlands on their heads, and
chains of flowers about their necks, each of them strictly observing
their place: if the inquisitive reader should desire to know how he
discovered those garlands and flowery chains; (especially as their heads
were covered, and they are secret in their religious ceremonies) I must
inform him, that Acosta wrought a kind of cotton, or woollen cloth for
them, much finer than silk, through which he might have easily seen
them—besides, such a religious dress gave him a better opportunity of
hanging a cross, and a string of beads afterwards round their necks.
{206}
Next to those religious men, he ushers in a fine company of gods and
goddesses, in imagery, dressed like the others, the people paying them
divine worship; this without doubt, is intended to support the popish
saint-worship. Then he makes them sing, and dance round the paste, and
use several other ceremonies. And when the eyes are tired with viewing
those wild circlings, he solemnly blesses, and consecrates those morsels
of paste, and thus makes them the real flesh and bones of the idol,
which the people honour as gods. When he has ended his feast of
transubstantiation, he sets his sacrificers to work, and orders them to
kill and sacrifice more men than at any other festival,—as he thinks
proper to make this a greater carnival than any of the rest.
When he comes to finish his bloody sacrifices, he orders the young men
and women into two rows, directly facing each other, to dance and sing
by the drum, in praise of the feast and the god; and he sets the oldest
and the greatest men to answer the song, and dance around them, in a
great circle. This with a little alteration, resembles the custom of the
northern Indians. He says, that all the inhabitants of the city and
country came to this great feast,—that it was deemed sacrilegious in any
person to eat of the honeyed paste, on this great festival-day, or to
drink water, till the afternoon; and that they earnestly advised those,
who had the use of reason, to abstain from water till the afternoon, and
carefully concealed it from the children during the time of this
ceremony. But, at the end of the feast, he makes the priests and
ancients of the temple to break the image of paste and consecrated
rolls, into many pieces, and give them to the people by the way of
sacrament, according to the strictest rules of order, from the greatest
and eldest, to the youngest and least, men, women and children: and he
says, they received it with bitter tears, great reverence, and a very
awful fear, with other strong signs of devotion, saying at the same
time,—“they did not[94] eat the flesh and bones of their God.” He adds,
that they who had sick people at home, demanded a piece of the said
paste, and carried and gave it to them, with the most profound reverence
and awful adoration; that all who partook of this propitiating
sacrifice, were obliged to give a part of the feed of Maiz, of which the
idol was made; and then at the end of the solemnity, a priest of high
authority preached to {207} the people on their laws and ceremonies,
with a commanding voice, and expressive gestures; and thus dismissed the
assembly.
Well may Acosta blame the devil in the manner he does, for introducing
among the Mexicans, so near a resemblance of the popish superstitions
and idolatry. But whether shall we blame or pity this writer, for
obscuring the truth with a confused heap of falshoods? The above is
however a curious Spanish picture of the Mexican passover, or annual
expiation of sins, and of their second passover in favour of their sick
people,—and of paying their tythes,—according to similar customs of our
North-American Indians. We are now sufficiently informed of the rites
and customs of the remote, and uncorrupt South-Americans, by the
Missisippi Indians, who have a communication with them, both in peace
and war.
Ribault Laudon describing the yearly festival of the Floridans, says,
that the day before it began, the women sweeped out a great circuit of
ground, where it was observed with solemnity;—that when the main body of
the people entered the holy ground, they all placed themselves in good
order, stood up painted, and decked in their best apparel, when three
_Iawas_, or priests, with different paintings and gestures followed
them, playing on musical instruments, and singing with a solemn
voice—the others answering them: that when they made three circles in
this manner, the men ran off to the woods, and the women staid weeping
behind, cutting their arms with muscle-shells, and throwing the blood
towards the sun; and that when the men returned, the three days feast
was finished. This is another confused Spanish draught of the Floridan
passover, or feast of love; and of their universal method of bleeding
themselves after much exercise, which according to the Spanish plan,
they offered up to the sun. From these different writers, it is plain
that where the Indians have not been corrupted by foreigners, their
customs and religious worship are nearly alike; and also that every
different tribe, or nation of Indians, uses such-like divine proper
name, and awful sounds, as _Yah-Wah_, _Hetovah_, &c. being
transpositions of the divine essential name, as our northern Indians
often repeat in their religious dances. As the sound of _Yah-wah_ jarred
in Laudon’s ear, he called it _Java_, in resemblance to the Syriac and
Greek method of expressing the tetra-grammaton, from which Galatinus
imposed it upon us, calling it _Jehowah_, instead of _Yohewah_. {208}
The Spanish writers tell us, that the Mexicans had a feast, and month,
which they called _Hueitozolti_, when the maiz was ripe; every man at
that time bringing an handful to be offered at the temple, with a kind
of drink, called _Utuli_, made out of the same grain.—But they soon deck
up an idol with roses, garlands, and flowers, and describe them as
offering to it sweet gums, &c. Then they speedily dress a woman with the
apparel of either the god, or goddess, of salt, which must be to season
the human sacrifices, as they depicture them according to their own
dispositions. But they soon change the scene, and bring in the god of
gain, in a rich temple dedicated to him, where the merchants apart
sacrifice vast numbers of purchased captives. It often chagrines an
inquisitive and impartial reader to trace the contradictions, and
chimerical inventions, of those aspiring bigoted writers; who speak of
what they did not understand, only by signs, and a few chance words. The
discerning reader can easily perceive them from what hath been already
said, and must know that this Spanish mountain in labour, is only the
Indian first fruit-offering, according to the usage of our
North-American Indians.
It is to be lamented that writers will not keep to matters of fact: Some
of our own historians have described the Mohawks as cannibals, and
continually hunting after man’s flesh; with equal truth Diodorus
Siculus, Strabo, and others report, that in Britain there were formerly
Anthropophagi, “man-eaters.”
Garcillasso de La Vega, another Spanish romancer, says, that the
Peruvian shepherds worshipped the star called Lyra, as they imagined it
preserved their flocks: but he ought first to have supplied them with
flocks, for they had none except a kind of wild sheep,[95] that kept in
the mountains, and which are of so fætid a smell, that no creature is
fond to approach them.
The same aspiring fictitious writer tells us, the Peruvians worshipped
the Creator of the world, whom he is pleased to call _Viracocha
Pachuyacha ha hic_: any person who is in the least acquainted with the
rapid flowing manner of the Indian American dialects, will conclude from
the wild termination that the former is not the Peruvian divine name.
Next to this great Creator of the universe, he affirms, they worshipped
the sun; and {209} next to the solar orb, they deified and worshipped
thunder, believing it proceeded from a man in heaven, who had power over
the rain, hail, and thunder, and every thing in the ærial regions; and
that they offered up sacrifices to it, but none to the universal
Creator. To prefer the effect to the acknowledged prime cause, is
contrary to the common reason of mankind, who adore that object which
they esteem either the most beneficent, or the most powerful.
Monsieur Le Page Du Pratz tells us, he lived seven years, among the
Nachee Indians, about one hundred leagues up the Missisippi from
New-Orleans; and in order to emulate the Spanish romances of the
Indians, in his performance, he affirms their women are double-breasted,
which he particularly describes: and then following the Spanish copy, he
assures us, the highest rank of their nobles is called suns, and that
they only attend the sacred and eternal fire; which he doubtless
mentioned, merely to introduce his convex lens, by which he tells us
with a great air of confidence, he gained much esteem among them, as by
the gift of it, he enabled them to continue their holy fire, if it
should casually be near extinguished. According to him, the Chikkasah
tongue was the court language of the Missisippi Indians, and that it had
not the letter _R_.—The very reverse of which is the truth; for the
French and all their red savages were at constant war with them, because
of their firm connection with the English, and hated their national
name; and as to the language, they could not converse with them, as
their dialects are so different from each other. I recited a long string
of his well-known stories to a body of gentlemen, well skilled in the
languages, rites, and customs of our East and West-Florida Indians, and
they agreed that the Koran did not differ more widely from the divine
oracles, than the accounts of this writer from the genuine customs of
the Indian Americans.
The Spanish artists have furnished the savage war-chieftain, or their
Emperor Montezuma, with very spacious and beautiful palaces, one of
which they raised on pillars of fine jasper; and another wrought with
exquisite skill out of marble, jasper, and other valuable stones, with
veins glistening like rubies,—they have finished the roof with equal
skill, composed of carved and painted cypress, cedar, and pine-trees,
without any kind of nails. They should have furnished some of the
chambers with suitable pavilions {210} and beds of state; but the
bedding and furniture in our northern Indian huts, is the same with what
they were pleased to describe, in the wonderful Mexican palaces. In this
they have not done justice to the grand red monarch, whom they raised
up, (with his 1000 women, or 3000 according to some,) only to magnify
the Spanish power by overthrowing him.
Montezuma in an oration to his people, at the arrival of the Spaniards,
is said by Malvendar, to have persuaded his people to yield to the power
of his Catholic Majesty’s arms, for their own fore-fathers were
strangers in that land, and brought there long before that period in a
fleet. The emperor, who they pretend bore such universal arbitrary sway,
is raised by their pens, from the usual rank of a war chieftain, to his
imperial greatness: But despotic power is death to their ears, as it is
destructive of their darling liberty, and reputed theocratic government;
they have no name for a subject, but say, “the people.” In order to
carry on the self-flattering war-romance, they began the epocha of that
great fictitious empire, in the time of the ambitious and formidable
Montezuma, that their handful of heaven-favoured popish saints might
have the more honour in destroying it: had they described it of a long
continuance, they foresaw that the world would detect the fallacy, as
soon as they learned the language of the pretended empire; correspondent
to which, our own great Emperor Powhatan of Virginia, was soon
dethroned. We are sufficiently informed by the rambling Missisippi
Indians, that _Motehshuma_ is a common high war-name of the
South-American leaders; and which the fate he is said to receive,
strongly corroborates. Our Indians urge with a great deal of vehemence,
that as every one is promoted only by public virtue, and has his equals
in civil and martial affairs, those Spanish books that have mentioned
red emperors, and great empires in America, ought to be burnt in some of
the remaining old years accursed fire. And this Indian fixed opinion
seems to be sufficiently confirmed by the situation of Mexico, as it is
only about 315 miles from south to north; and narrower than 200 miles
along the northern coast—and lies between Tlascala and Mechoacan, to the
west of the former, and east of the latter, whence the Mexicans were
continually harassed by those lurking swift-footed savages, who could
secure their retreat home, in the space of two or three days. When we
consider the vicinity of those two inimical states to the pretended
puissant empire of Mexico, which might have easily crushed them to
pieces, with her formidable {211} armies, in order to secure the lives
of the subjects, and credit of the state, we may safely venture to
affirm, from the long train of circumstances already exhibited, that the
Spanish Peruvian and Mexican empires are without the least foundation in
nature; and that the Spaniards defeated the tribe of Mexico (properly
called _Mechiko_) &c. chiefly, by the help of their red allies.
In their descriptions of South-America and its native inhabitants, they
treat largely of heaven, hell, and purgatory; lions, salamanders, maids
of honour, maids of penance, and their abbesses; men whipping themselves
with cords; idols, mattins, monastic vows, cloisters of young men, with
a prodigious group of other popish inventions: and we must not forget to
do justice to those industrious and sagacious observers, who discovered
two golgothas, or towers made of human skulls, plaistered with lime.
Acosta tells us, that Andrew de Topia assured him, he and Gonsola de
Vimbria reckoned one hundred and thirty-six thousand human skulls in
them. The temple dedicated to the air, is likewise worthy of being
mentioned, as they assert in the strongest manner, that five thousand
priests served constantly in it, and obliged every one who entered, to
bring some human sacrifice; that the walls of it were an inch thick, and
the floor a foot deep, with black, dry, clotted blood. If connected
herewith, we reflect, that beside this blood-thirsty god of the air, the
Spaniards have represented them as worshipping a multitude of idol gods
and goddesses, (no less than two thousand according to Lopez de Gomara)
and sacrificing to them chiefly human victims; and that the friars are
reported by a Spanish bishop of Mexico, in his letters of the year 1532,
to have broken down twenty thousand idols, and desolated five hundred
idol temples, where the natives sacrificed every year more than twenty
thousand hearts of boys and girls; and that if the noblemen were burnt
to ashes, they killed their cooks, butlers, chaplains, and
dwarfs[LII]—and had a plenty of targets, maces, and ensigns hurled into
their funeral piles: this terrible slaughter, points out to us clearly
from their own accounts, that these authors either gave the world a
continued chain of falsehoods, or those sacrifices, and human massacres
{212} they boastingly tell us of, would have, long before they came,
utterly depopulated Peru and Mexico.
Footnote LII:
With regard to Indian dwarfs, I never heard of, or saw any in the
northern nations, but one in Ishtatoe, a northern town of the middle
part of the Cheerake country,—and he was a great beloved man.
I shall now quote a little of their less romantic description, to
confirm the account I have given concerning the genuine rites, and
customs, of our North-American Indians.
The ornaments of the Indians of South and North America, were formerly,
and still are alike, without the least difference, except in value.
Those superficial writers agree, that the men and women of Peru and
Mexico wore golden ear-rings, and bracelets around their necks and
wrists; that the men wore rings of the same metal in their nose, marked
their bodies with various figures, painted their faces red, and the
women their cheeks, which seems to have been a very early and general
custom. They tell us, that the coronation of the Indian kings, and
installment of their nobles, was solemnized with comedies, banquets,
lights, &c. and that no plebeians were allowed to serve before their
kings; they must be knights, or noblemen. All those sounding high titles
are only a confused picture of the general method of the Indians in
crowning their warriors, performing their war-dances, and esteeming
those fellows as old women, who never attended the reputed holy ark with
success for the beloved brethren.
Don Antonio de Ulloa[96] informs us, that some of the South-American
natives cut the lobes of their ears, and for a considerable time,
fastened small weights to them, in order to lengthen them; that others
cut holes in their upper and under lips; through the cartilege of the
nose, their chins, and jaws, and either hung or thrust through them,
such things as they most fancied, which also agrees with the ancient
customs of our Northern Indians.
Emanuel de Moraes and Acosta affirm, that the Brasilians marry in their
own family, or tribe. And Jo. de Laet. says, they call their uncles and
aunts, “fathers and mothers,” which is a custom of the Hebrews, and of
all our North-American Indians: and he assures us they mourn very much
for their dead; and that their clothes are like those of the early Jews.
{213}
Ulloa assures us, that the South American Indians have no other method
of weaving carpets, quilts, and other stuffs, but to count the threads
one by one, when they are passing the woof;—that they spin cotton and
linnen, as their chief manufacture, and paint their cloth with the
images of men, beasts, birds, fishes, trees, flowers, &c. and that each
of those webs was adapted to one certain use, without being cut, and
that their patience was equal to so arduous a task. According to this
description, there is not the least disparity between the ancient
North-American method of manufacturing, and that of the South Americans.
Acosta writes, that the clothes of the South-American Indians are shaped
like those of the ancient Jews, being a square little cloak, and a
little coat: and the Rev. Mr. Thorowgood,[97] anno 1650, observes, that
this is a proof of some weight in shewing their original descent;
especially to such who pay a deference to Seneca’s parallel arguments of
the Spaniards having settled Italy; for the old mode of dress is
universally alike, among the Indian Americans.
Laet, in his description of America, and Escarbotus, assure us, they
often heard the South American Indians to repeat the sacred word
_Halleluiah_, which made them admire how they first attained it. And
Malvenda says, that the natives of St. Michael had tomb-stones, which
the Spaniards digged up, with several ancient Hebrew characters upon
them, as, “Why is God gone away?” And, “He is dead, God knows.” Had his
curiosity induced him to transcribe the epitaph, it would have given
more satisfaction; for, as they yet repeat the divine essential name,
_Yo He (ta) Wah_, so as not to prophane it, when they mourn for their
dead, it is probable, they could write or engrave it, after the like
manner, when they first arrived on this main continent.
We are told, that the South American Indians have a firm hope of the
resurrection of their bodies, at a certain period of time; and that on
this account they bury their most valuable treasures with their dead, as
well as the most useful conveniences for future domestic life, such as
their bows and arrows: And when they saw the Spaniards digging up their
graves for gold and silver, they requested them to forbear scattering
the bones of their {214} dead in that manner, lest it should prevent
their being raised and united again[LIII].
Footnote LIII:
Vid. Ceuto ad Solin. Benz. & Hist. Peruv.