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.