Argument XVI.
Before the Indians go to War, they have many preparatory ceremonies of purification and fasting, like what is recorded of the Israelites.
In the first commencement of a war, a party of the injured tribe turns out first, to revenge the innocent crying blood of their own bone and flesh, as they term it. When the leader begins to beat up for volunteers, he goes three times round his dark winter-house, contrary to the course of the sun, sounding the war-whoop, singing the war-song, and beating the drum. {159} Then he speaks to the listening crowd with very rapid language, short pauses, and an awful commanding voice, tells them of the continued friendly offices they have done the enemy, but which have been ungratefully returned with the blood of his kinsmen; therefore as the white paths have changed their beloved colour, his heart burns within him with eagerness to tincture them all along, and even to make them flow over with the hateful blood of the base contemptible enemy. Then he strongly persuades his kindred warriors and others, who are not afraid of the enemies bullets and arrows, to come and join him with manly cheerful hearts: he assures them, he is fully convinced, as they are all bound by the love-knot, so they are ready to hazard their lives to revenge the blood of their kindred and country-men; that the love of order, and the necessity of complying with the old religious customs of their country, had hitherto checked their daring generous hearts, but now, those hindrances are removed: he proceeds to whoop again for the warriors to come and join him, and sanctify themselves for success against the common enemy, according to their ancient religious law.
By his eloquence, but chiefly by their own greedy thirst of revenge, and intense love of martial glory, on which they conceive their liberty and happiness depend, and which they constantly instil into the minds of their youth—a number soon join him in his winter-house, where they live separate from all others, and purify themselves for the space of three days and nights, exclusive of the first broken day. In each of those days they observe a strict fast[[63]] till sun-set, watching the young men very narrowly who have not been initiated in war-titles, lest unusual hunger should tempt them to violate it, to the supposed danger of all their lives in war, by destroying the power of their purifying beloved physic, which they drink plentifully during that time. This purifying physic, is warm water highly imbittered with button-rattle-snake-root, which as hath been before observed, they apply only to religious purposes. Sometimes after bathing they drink a decoction made of the said root—and in like manner the leader applies aspersions, or sprinklings, both at home and when out at war. They are such strict observers of the law of purification, and think it so essential in obtaining health and success in war, as not to allow the best beloved trader that ever lived among them, even to enter the beloved ground, appropriated to the religious duty of being sanctified {160} for war; much less to associate with the camp in the woods, though he went (as I have known it to happen) on the same war design;[[64]] —they oblige him to walk and encamp separate by himself, as an impure dangerous animal, till the leader hath purified him, according to their usual time and method, with the consecrated things of the ark. With the Hebrews, the ark of Berith, “the purifier,” was a small wooden chest, of three feet nine inches in length, two feet three inches broad, and two feet three inches in height. It contained the golden pot that had manna in it, Aaron’s rod, and the tables of the law. The Indian Ark[[65]] is of a very simple construction, and it is only the intention and application of it, that makes it worthy of notice; for it is made with pieces of wood securely fastened together in the form of a square. The middle of three of the sides extend a little out, but one side is flat, for the conveniency of the person’s back who carries it. Their ark has a cover, and the whole is made impenetrably close with hiccory-splinters; it is about half the dimensions of the divine Jewish ark, and may very properly be called the red Hebrew ark of the purifier, imitated. The leader, and a beloved waiter, carry it by turns. It contains several consecrated vessels, made by beloved superannuated women, and of such various antiquated forms, as would have puzzled Adam to have given significant names to each. The leader and his attendant, are purified longer than the rest of the company, that the first may be fit to act in the religious office of a priest of war, and the other to carry the awful sacred ark. All the while they are at war, the Hetissu, or “beloved waiter,” feeds each of the warriors by an exact stated rule, giving them even the water they drink, out of his own hands, lest by intemperance they should spoil the supposed communicative power of their holy things, and occasion fatal disasters to the war camp.
The ark, mercy-seat, and cherubim, were the very essence of the levitical law, and often called “the testimonies of Yohewah.” The ark of the temple was termed his throne, and David calls it his foot-stool. In speaking of the Indian places of refuge for the unfortunate, I observed, that if a captive taken by the reputed power of the beloved things of the ark, should be able to make his escape into one of these towns,—or even into the winter-house of the Archi-magus, he is delivered from the fiery torture, otherwise inevitable. This when joined to the rest of the faint images of the Mosaic customs they still retain, seems to point at the mercy-seat in the sanctuary. It is also highly worthy of notice, that they {161} 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 level land upon short logs, always resting themselves on the like materials. Formerly, when this tract was the Indian Flanders of America, as the French and all their red Canadian confederates were bitter enemies to the inhabitants, we often saw the woods full of such religious war-reliques. The former is a strong imitation of the pedestal, on which the Jewish ark was placed, a stone rising three fingers breadth above the floor. And when we consider—in what a surprising manner the Indians copy after the ceremonial law of the Hebrews, and their strict purity in their war camps; that Opae, “the leader,” obliges all during the first campaign they make with the beloved ark, to stand, every day they lie by, from sun-rise to sun-set—and after a fatiguing day’s march, and scanty allowance, to drink warm water imbittered with rattle-snake-root very plentifully, in order to be purified—that they have also as strong a faith of the power and holiness of their ark, as ever the Israelites retained of their’s, ascribing the superior success of the party, to their stricter adherence to the law than the other; and after they return home, hang it on the leader’s red-painted war pole—we have strong reason to conclude their origin is Hebrew. From the Jewish ark of the tabernacle and the temple, the ancient heathens derived their arks, their cistæ or religious chests, their Teraphim or Dii Lares, and their tabernacles and temples. But their modes and objects of worship, differed very widely from those of the Americans.
The Indian ark is deemed so sacred and dangerous to be touched, either by their own sanctified warriors, or the spoiling enemy, that they durst not touch it upon any account[[XXXVII]]. It is not to be meddled with by any, except the war chieftain and his waiter, under the penalty of incurring great evil. {162} Nor would the most inveterate enemy touch it in the woods for the very same reason; which is agreeable to the religious opinion and customs of the Hebrews, respecting the sacredness of their ark, witness what befel Uzzah, for touching it, though with a religious view, and the Philistines for carrying it away, so that they soon thought proper to return it, with presents.
[XXXVII]. A gentleman who was at the Ohio, in the year 1756, assured me he saw a stranger there very importunate to view the inside of the Cheerake ark, which was covered with a drest deer-skin, and placed on a couple of short blocks. An Indian centinel watched it, armed with a hiccory bow, and brass-pointed barbed arrows, and he was faithful to his trust; for finding the stranger obtruding to pollute the supposed sacred vehicle, he drew an arrow to the head, and would have shot him through the body, had he not suddenly withdrawn; the interpreter, when asked by the gentleman what it contained, told him there was nothing in it but a bundle of conjuring traps. This shews what conjurers our common interpreters are, and how much the learned world have really profited by their informations. The Indians have an old tradition, that when they left their own native land, they brought with them a sanctified rod by order of an oracle, which they fixed every night in the ground; and were to remove from place to place on the continent towards the sun-rising, till it budded in one night’s time; that they obeyed the sacred mandate, and the miracle took place after they arrived to this side of the Missisippi, on the present land they possess. This, they say, was the sole cause of their settling here—of fighting so firmly for their reputed holy land and holy things—and that they may be buried with their beloved fore-fathers. I have seen other Indians who pretend to the like miraculous direction, and I think it plainly to refer to Aaron’s rod, which was a branch of an almond-tree, and that budded and blossomed in one night. (A) The Overhill Cherokees under Ostenaco (Outasite, another name) were on the campaign of 1756, in aid of the British and American forces. Dinwiddie Papers, II, 446 et seq. (W)
The leader virtually acts the part of a priest of war,[[66]] pro tempore, in imitation of the Israelites fighting under the divine military banner. If they obtain the victory, and get some of the enemies scalps, they sanctify themselves when they make their triumphal entrance, in the manner they observed before they set off to war; but, if their expedition proves unfortunate, they only mourn over their loss, ascribing it to the vicious conduct of some of the followers of the beloved ark. What blushes should this savage virtue raise in the faces of nominal christians, who ridicule the unerring divine wisdom, for the effects of their own imprudent or vicious conduct. May they learn from the rude uncivilized Americans, that vice necessarily brings evil—and virtue, happiness.
The Indians will not cohabit with women while they are out at war;[[67]] they religiously abstain from every kind of intercourse even with their own wives, for the space of three days and nights before they go to war, and so after they return home, because they are to sanctify themselves. This religious war custom, especially in so savage a generation, seems to be derived from the Hebrews, who thus sanctified themselves, to gain the divine protection, and victory over their common enemies: as in the precept of Moses to the war camp when he ascended Mount Sinai; and in Joshua’s prohibition to the Israelites[[XXXVIII]]; and in the case of Uriah. The warriors consider themselves as devoted to God apart from the rest of the {163} people, while they are at war accompanying the sacred ark with the supposed holy things it contains.
[XXXVIII]. Joshua commanded the Israelites the night before they marched, to sanctify themselves by washing their clothes, avoiding all impurities, and abstaining from matrimonial intercourse.