Argument XIV.
Many other of the Indian Punishments, resemble those of the Jews. Whosoever attentively views the features of the Indian, and his eye, and {146} reflects on his fickle, obstinate, and cruel disposition, will naturally think on the Jews. English America, feelingly knows the parity of the temper of their neighbouring Indians, with that of the Hebrew nation.
The Israelites cut off the hands and feet of murderers, 2 Sam. iv. 12.—strangled false prophets—and sometimes burned, stoned, or beheaded those malefactors who were condemned by the two courts of judgment. The Indians either by the defect of tradition, or through a greedy desire of revenge, torture their prisoners and devoted captives, with a mixture of all those Jewish capital punishments. They keep the original so close in their eye, as to pour cold water on the sufferers when they are fainting, or overcome by the fiery torture—to refresh, and enable them to undergo longer tortures. The Hebrews gave wine mixt with the juice of myrrh, to their tortured criminals, to revive their spirits; and sometimes vinegar to prevent too great an effusion of blood, lest they should be disappointed in glutting their greedy eyes, with their favourite tragedy of blood: which was eminently exemplified in their insulting treatment of Christ on the cross.
The Indians, beyond all the rest of mankind, seem in this respect to be actuated with the Jewish spirit. They jeer, taunt, laugh, whoop, and rejoice at the inexpressible agonies of those unfortunate persons, who are under their butchering hands; which would excite pity and horror in any heart, but that of a Jew. When they are far from home, they keep as near to their distinguishing customs, as circumstances allow them: not being able formerly to cut off the heads of those they killed in war, for want of proper weapons; nor able to carry them three or four hundred miles without putrefaction, they cut off the skin of their heads with their flint-stone knives, as speaking trophies of honour, and which register them among the brave by procuring them war titles. Though now they have plenty of proper weapons, they vary not from this ancient barbarous custom of the American aborigines: which has been too well known by many of our northern colonists, and is yet shamefully so to South-Carolina and Georgia barriers, by the hateful name of scalping.
The Indians strictly adhere more than the rest of mankind to that positive, unrepealed law of Moses, “He who sheddeth man’s blood, by {147} man shall his blood be shed:” like the Israelites, their hearts burn violently day and night without intermission, till they shed blood for blood. They transmit from father to son, the memory of the loss of their relation, or one of their own tribe or family, though it were an old woman—if she was either killed by the enemy, or by any of their own people. If indeed the murder be committed by a kinsman, the eldest can redeem: however, if the circumstances attending the fact be peculiar and shocking to nature, the murderer is condemned to die the death of a sinner, “without any one to mourn for him,” as in the case of suicide; contrary to their usage toward the rest of their dead, and which may properly be called the death or burial of a Jewish ass.
When they have had success in killing the enemy, they tie fire-brands in the most-frequented places, with grape vines which hang pretty low, in order that they may be readily seen by the enemy. As they reckon the aggressors have loudly declared war, it would be madness or treachery in their opinion to use such public formalities before they have revenged crying blood; it would inform the enemy of their design of retaliating, and destroy the honest intention of war. They likewise strip the bark off several large trees in conspicuous places, and paint them with red and black hieroglyphics, thereby threatening the enemy with more blood and death. The last were strong and similar emblems with the Hebrews, and the first is analogous to one of their martial customs; for when they arrived at the enemies territories, they threw a fire-brand within their land, as an emblem of the anger of Ash, “the holy fire” for their ill deeds to his peculiarly beloved people. To which custom Obadiah alludes, when he says (ver. 18.) “they shall kindle in them and devour them, there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau, &c.” which the Septuagint translates, “one who carries a fire-brand.” The conduct of the Israelitish champion, Sampson, against the Philistines, proceeded from the same war custom, when he took three-hundred Shugnalim, (which is a bold strong metaphor) signifying Vulpes, foxes or sheaves of corn; and tying them tail to tail, or one end to the other in a continued train, he set fire to them, and by that means, burned down their standing corn.
In the late Cheerake war, at the earnest persuasions of the trading people, several of the Muskohge warriors came down to the barrier-settlements of Georgia, {148} to go against the Cheerake, and revenge English crying blood: but the main body of the nation sent a running embassy to the merchants there, requesting them immediately to forbear their unfriendly proceedings, otherwise, they should be forced by disagreeable necessity to revenge their relations blood if it should chance to be spilt contrary to their ancient laws: this alludes to the levitical law, by which he who decoyed another to his end, was deemed the occasion of his death, and consequently answerable for it. If an unruly horse belonging to a white man, should chance to be tied at a trading house and kill one of the Indians, either the owner of the house, or the person who tied the beast there, is responsible for it, by their lex talionis; which seems to be derived also from the Mosaic precept,—if an ox known by its owner to push with its horn, should kill a person, they were both to die the death. If the Indians have a dislike to a person, who by any casualty was the death of one of their people, he stands accountable, and will certainly suffer for it, unless he takes sanctuary.
I knew an under trader, who being intrusted by his employer with a cargo of goods for the country of the Muskohge, was forced by the common law of good faith, to oppose some of those savages in the remote woods, to prevent their robbing the camp: the chieftain being much intoxicated with spirituous liquors, and becoming outrageous in proportion to the resistance he met with, the trader like a brave man, opposed lawless force by force: some time after, the lawless bacchanal was attacked with a pleurisy, of which he died. Then the heads of the family of the deceased convened the lesser judicatory, and condemned the trader to be shot to death for the supposed murder of their kinsman; which they easily effected, as he was off his guard, and knew nothing of their murdering design. His employer however had such a friendly intercourse with them, as to gain timely notice of any thing that might affect his person or interest; but he was so far from assisting the unfortunate brave man, as the laws of humanity and common honour obliged him, that as a confederate, he not only concealed their bloody intentions, but went basely to the next town, while the savages painted themselves red and black, and give them an opportunity of perpetrating the horrid murder. The poor victim could have easily escaped to the English settlements if forewarned, and got the affair accommodated by the mediation of the government. In acts of blood, if the supposed murderer {149} escapes, his nearest kinsman either real or adopted, or if he has none there, his friend stands according to their rigorous law, answerable for the fact. But though the then governor of South Carolina was sufficiently informed of this tragedy, and that it was done contrary to the treaty of amity, and that there is no possibility of managing them, but by their own notions of virtue, he was passive, and allowed them with impunity to shed this innocent blood; which they ever since have improved to our shame and sorrow. They have gradually become worse every year; and corrupted other nations by their contagious copy, so as to draw them into the like bloody scenes, with the same contempt, as if they had killed so many helpless timorous dunghill fowls, as they despitefully term us.
There never was any set of people, who pursued the Mosaic law of retaliation with such a fixt eagerness as these Americans.[[57]] They are so determined in this point, that formerly a little boy shooting birds in the high and thick corn-fields, unfortunately chanced slightly to wound another with his childish arrow; the young vindictive fox, was excited by custom to watch his ways with the utmost earnestness, till the wound was returned in as equal manner as could be expected. Then, “all was straight,” according to their phrase. Their hearts were at rest, by having executed that strong law of nature, and they sported together as before. This observation though small in itself, is great in its combined circumstances, as it is contrary to the usage of the old heathen world. They forgive all crimes at the annual atonement of sins, except murder, which is always punished with death. The Indians constantly upbraid us in their bacchanals, for inattention to this maxim of theirs; they say, that all nations of people who are not utterly sunk in cowardice, take revenge of blood before they can have rest, cost what it will. The Indian Americans are more eager to revenge blood, than any other people on the whole face of the earth. And when the heart of the revenger of blood in Israel was hot within him, it was a terrible thing for the casual manslayer to meet him, Deut. xix. 6. “Lest the avenger of blood pursue the slayer while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.”
I have known the Indians to go a thousand miles, for the purpose of revenge, in pathless woods; over hills and mountains; through large cane {150} swamps, full of grape-vines and briars; over broad lakes, rapid rivers, and deep creeks; and all the way endangered by poisonous snakes, if not with the rambling and lurking enemy, while at the same time they were exposed to the extremities of heat and cold, the vicissitude of the seasons; to hunger and thirst, both by chance, and their religious scanty method of living when at war, to fatigues, and other difficulties. Such is their over-boiling, revengeful temper, that they utterly contemn all those things as imaginary trifles, if they are so happy as to get the scalp of the murderer, or enemy, to satisfy the supposed craving ghosts of their deceased relations. Though they imagine the report of guns will send off the ghosts of their kindred that died at home, to their quiet place, yet they firmly believe, that the spirits of those who are killed by the enemy, without equal revenge of blood, find no rest, and at night haunt the houses of the tribe to which they belonged[[XXXIII]]: but, when that kindred duty of retaliation is justly executed, they immediately get ease and power to fly away: This opinion, and their method of burying and mourning for the dead, of which we shall speak presently, occasion them to retaliate in so earnest and fierce a manner. It is natural for friends to study each others mutual happiness, and we should pity the weakness of those who are destitute of our advantages; whose intellectual powers are unimproved, and who are utterly unacquainted with the sciences, as well as every kind of mechanical business, to engage their attention at home. Such persons cannot well live without war; and being destitute of public faith to secure the lives of embassadors in time of war, they have no sure method to reconcile their differences; consequently, when any casual thing draws them into a war, it grows every year more spiteful till it advances to a bitter enmity, so as to excite them to an implacable hatred to one another’s very national names. Then they must go abroad to spill the enemy’s blood, and to revenge crying blood. We must also consider, it is by scalps they get all their war-titles, which distinguish them among the brave: and these they hold in as high esteem, as the most ambitious Roman general ever did a great triumph. By how much the deeper any society of people are sunk in ignorance, so much the more they value themselves on their bloody merit. This was {151} long the characteristic of the Hebrew nation, and has been conveyed down to these their supposed red descendants.
[XXXIII]. As the Hebrews supposed there was a holiness in Canaan, more than in any other land, so they believed that their bodies buried out of it, would be carried through caverns, or subterraneous passages of the earth to the holy land, where they shall rise again and dart up to their holy attracting centre.
However, notwithstanding their bloody temper and conduct towards enemies, when their law of blood does not interfere, they observe that Mosaic[Mosaic] precept, “He shall be dealt with according as he intended to do to his neighbour, but the innocent and righteous man thou shalt not slay.” I must observe also that as the Jewish priests[priests] were by no means to shed human blood, and as king David was forbidden by the prophet to build a temple because he was a man of war and had shed blood—so, the Indian Ishtohoollo “holy men” are by their function absolutely forbidden to slay; notwithstanding their propensity thereto, even for small injuries. They will not allow the greatest warrior to officiate, when the yearly grand sacrifice of expiation is offered up, or on any other religious occasion, except the leader. All must be performed by their beloved men, who are clean of every stain of blood, and have their foreheads circled with streaks of white clay.
As this branch of the general subject cannot be illustrated, but by well-known facts, I shall exemplify it with the late and long-continued conduct of the northern Indians, and those of Cape Florida, whom our navigators have reported to be cannibals. The Muskohge[Muskohge], who have been bitter enemies to the Cape Florida Indians, time immemorial, affirm their manners, tempers and appetites, to be the very same as those of the neighboring Indian nations. And the Florida captives who were sold in Carolina, have told me, that the Spaniards of St. Augustine and St. Mark’s garrisons, not only hired and paid them for murdering our seamen, who were so unfortunate as to be shipwrecked on their dangerous coast, but that they delivered up to the savages those of our people they did not like, to be put to the fiery torture. From their bigotted persecuting spirit, we may conclude the victims to have been those who would not worship their images and crucifixes. The Spaniards no doubt could easily influence this decayed small tribe to such a practice, as they depended upon them for the necessaries of life: and though they could never settle out of their garrisons in West-Florida, on account of the jealous temper of the neighboring unconquered Indians, yet the Cape-Floridans were only Spanish mercenaries, shedding blood for their maintenance. A seduced Indian {152} is certainly less faulty than the apostate Christian who instigated him; when an Indian sheds human blood, it does not proceed from wantonness, or the view of doing evil, but solely to put the law of retaliation in force, to return one injury for another; but, if he has received no ill, and has no suspicion of the kind, he usually offers no damage to those who fall in his power, but is moved with compassion, in proportion to what they seem to have undergone. Such as they devote to the fire, they flatter with the hope of being redeemed, as long as they can, to prevent the giving them any previous anxiety or grief, which their law of blood does not require.
The French Canadians are highly censurable, and their bloody popish clergy, for debauching our peaceable northern Indians, with their infernal catechism,—the first introduction into their religious mysteries. Formerly, when they initiated the Indian sucklings into their mixt idolatrous worship, they fastened round their necks, a bunch of their favourite red and black beads, with a silver cross hanging down on their breasts, thus engaging them, as they taught, to fight the battles of God. Then they infected the credulous Indians with a firm belief, that God once sent his own beloved son to fix the red people in high places of power, over the rest of mankind; that he passed through various countries, to the universal joy of the inhabitants, in order to come to the beloved red people, and place them in a superior station of life to the rest of the American world; but when he was on the point of sailing to America, to execute his divine embassy, he was murdered by the bloody monopolizing English, at the city of London, only to make the red people weigh light. Having thus instructed, and given them the catechism by way of question and answer, and furnished them with 2000 gross of scalping knives and other murdering articles, the catechumens soon sallied forth, and painted themselves all over with the innocent blood of our fellow-subjects, of different stations, and ages, and without any distinction of sex,—contrary to the standing Indian laws of blood.
The British lion at last however triumphed, and forced the French themselves to sue for that friendly intercourse and protection, which their former catechism taught the Indians to hate, and fly from, as dangerous to their universal happiness. {153}
When I have reasoned with some of the old headmen, against their barbarous custom of killing defenceless innocent persons, who neither could nor would oppose them in battle, but begged that they might only live to be their slaves, they told me that formerly they never waged war, but in revenge of blood; and that in such cases, they always devoted the guilty to be burnt alive when they were purifying themselves at home, to obtain victory over their enemies. But otherwise they treated the vanquished with the greatest clemency, and adopted them in the room of their relations, who had either died a natural death, or had before been sufficiently revenged, though killed by the enemy.
The Israelites thus often devoted their captives to death, without any distinction of age or sex,—as when they took Jericho, they saved only merciful Rahab and her family;—after they had plundered the Midianites of their riches, they put men women and children to death, dividing among themselves a few virgins and the plunder;—with other instances that might be quoted. The Indian Americans, beyond all the present race of Adam, are actuated by this bloody war-custom of the Israelites; they put their captives to various lingering torments, with the same unconcern as the Levite, when he cut up his beloved concubine into eleven portions, and sent them to the eleven tribes, to excite them to revenge the affront, the Benjamites had given him. When equal blood has not been shed to quench the crying blood of their relations, and give rest to their ghosts, according to their credenda, while they are sanctifying themselves for war, they always allot their captives either to be killed or put to the fiery torture: and they who are thus devoted, cannot by any means be saved, though they resembled an angel in beauty and virtue.
Formerly, the Indians defeated a great body of the French, who at two different times came to invade their country. They put to the fiery torture a considerable number of them; and two in particular, whom they imagined to have carried the French ark against them. The English traders solicited with the most earnest entreaties, in favour of the unfortunate captives; but they averred, that as it was not our business to intercede in behalf of a deceitful enemy who came to shed blood, unless we were resolved to share their deserved fate, so was it entirely out of the reach of goods, though piled as high as the skies, to redeem them,— {154} because they were not only the chief support of the French army, in spoiling so many of their warriors by the power of their ugly ark, before they conquered them; but were delivered over to the fire, before they entered into battle.
When I was on my way to the Chikkasah, at the Okchai, in the year 1745, the conduct of the Muskohge Indians was exactly the same with regard to a Cheerake stripling, whose father was a white man, and mother an half-breed,—regardless of the pressing entreaties and very high offers of the English traders, they burned him in their usual manner. This seems to be copied from that law which expressly forbad the redeeming any devoted persons, and ordered that they should be surely put to death, Lev. xxvii. 29. This precept had evidently a reference to the law of retaliation.—Saul in superstitious and angry mood, wanted to have murdered or sacrificed to God his favourite son Jonathan, because when he was fainting he tasted some honey which casually fell in his way, just after he had performed a prodigy of martial feats in behalf of Israel: but the gratitude, and reason of the people, prevented him from perpetrating that horrid murder. If devoting to death was a divine extraction, or if God delighted in human sacrifices, the people would have been criminal for daring to oppose the divine law,—which was not the case. Such a law if taken in an extensive and literal sense, is contrary to all natural reason and religion, and consequently in a strict sense, could not be enjoined by a benevolent and merciful God; who commands us to do justice and shew mercy to the very beasts; not to muzzle the ox while he is treading out the grain; nor to insnare the bird when performing her parental offices. “Are ye not of more value than many sparrows?”
The Indians use no stated ceremony in immolating their devoted captives, although it is the same thing to the unfortunate victims, what form their butcherers use. They are generally sacrificed before their conquerors set off for war with their ark and supposed holy things. And sometimes the Indians devote every one they meet in certain woods or paths, to be killed there, except their own people; this occasioned the cowardly Cheerake in the year 1753, to kill two white men on the Chikkasah war-path, which leads from the country of the Muskohge. And the Shawànoh Indians who {155} settled between the Ooe-Asa and Koosah-towns,[[58]] told us that their people to the northward had devoted the English to death for the space of six years; but when that time was expired and not before, they would live in friendship as formerly. If the English had at that time executed their own law against them, and demanded equal blood from the Cheeràke, and stopt all trade with them before they dipt themselves too deep in blood, they would soon have had a firm peace with all the Indian nations. This is the only way of treating them now, for when they have not the fear of offending, they will shed innocent blood, and proceed in the end to lay all restraint aside.
The late conduct of the Chikkasah war-council, in condemning two pretended friends to death, who came with a view of shedding blood; shews their knowledge of that equal law of divine appointment to the Jews, “he shall be dealt with exactly as he intended to do to his neighbour.”
It ought to be remarked, that they are careful of their youth, and fail not to punish them when they transgress. Anno 1766, I saw an old head man, called the Dog-King (from the nature of his office) correct several young persons—some for supposed faults, and others by way of prevention. He began with a lusty young fellow, who was charged with being more effeminate than became a warrior; and with acting contrary to their old religious rites and customs, particularly, because he lived nearer than any of the rest to an opulent and helpless German, by whom they supposed he might have been corrupted. He bastinadoed the young sinner severely, with a thick whip, about a foot and a half long, composed of plaited silk grass, and the fibres of the button snake-root stalks, tapering to the point, which was secured with a knot. He reasoned with him, as he corrected him: he told him that he was Chehakse Kanèha-He, literally, “you are as one who is wicked, and almost lost[[XXXIV]].” The grey-hair’d corrector said, he treated him in that manner according to ancient custom, through an effect of love, to induce him to shun vice, and to imitate the virtues of {156} his illustrious fore-fathers, which he endeavoured to enumerate largely: when the young sinner had received his supposed due, he went off seemingly well pleased.
[XXXIV]. As Chin-Kanehah signifies, “you have lost,” and Che-Kanehah, “you are lost,” it seems to point at the method the Hebrews used in correcting their criminals in Canaan, and to imply a similarity of manners. The word they use to express “forgetfulness,” looks the very same way, Ish Al Kanehah, “you forget,” meaning that Ish and Canaan are forgotten by Ale.
This Indian correction lessens gradually in its severity, according to the age of the pupils. While the Dog-King was catechising the little ones, he said Che Haksianna, “do not become vicious.” And when they wept, he said Che-Abela Awa, “I shall not kill you,” or “I shall not put you into the state of bleeding Abéle[[XXXV]].”
[XXXV]. The Indians use the word Hakse, to convey the idea of a person’s being criminal in any thing whatsoever. If they mention not the particular crime, they add, Kakset Kanehah, pointing as it were to those who were punished in Canaan. Such unfortunate persons as are mad, deaf, dumb or blind, are called by no other name than Hakse. In like manner Kallakse signifies “contemptible, unsteady, light, or easily thrown aside,”—it is a diminutive of קלל, of the same meaning. And they say such an one is Kallaks’-Ishto, “execrated, or accursed to God,” because found light in the divine balance. As the American Aborigines used no weights, the parity of language here with the Hebrew, seems to assure us, they originally derived this method of expression from the Israelites, who took the same idea from the poise of a balance, which divine writ frequently mentions. Job, chap. xxi, describes justice with a pair of scales, “Let me be weighed in an even balance, that I may know my perfection.” And they call weighing, or giving a preference, Tekále, according to the same figure of speech: and it agrees both in expression and meaning, with the Chaldean Tekel, if written with Hebrew characters, as in that extraordinary appearance on the wall of the Babylonish monarch, interpreted by the prophet Daniel. When they prefer one person and would lessen another, they say Eeàpa Wéhke Tekále, “this one weighs heavy,” and Eeàko Kallakse, or Kall’aks’ooshe Tekále, “that one weighs light, very light.” When any of their people are killed on any of the hunting paths, they frequently say, Heenna tungga Tannip Tekále, “right on the path, he was weighed for the enemy, or the opposite party,” for Tannip is the only word they have to express the words enemy and the opposite; as Ook’heenna Tannip, “the opposite side of the water path:” hence it is probable, they borrowed that notable Assyrian expression while in their supposed captivity, brought it with them to America, and introduced it into their language, to commemorate so surprising an event.
Like the present Jews, their old men are tenacious of their ancient rites and customs; imagining them to be the sure channel through which all temporal good things flow to them, and by which the opposite evils are averted. No wonder therefore, that they still retain a multiplicity of Hebrew words, which were repeated often with great reverence in the temple; and adhere to many of their ancient rules and methods of punishment. {157}