“The belief of a future state of rewards and punishments, has been kept alive among all heathen nations, by its connection with the sensible enjoyments and sufferings, and the consequent hopes and terror of men.
“Its origin must have been in divine revelation;[43] for it is impossible to conceive that the mind can have attained to it by its own unassisted powers. But the thought, when once communicated, would in the shipwreck of dissolving nature, be clung to with the grasp of expiring hope. Hence no nation have yet been found, however rude and barbarous, who have not agreed in the great and general principle of retributive immortality. When, however, we descend to detail, and inquire into their peculiar notions with regard to this expected state, we find that their traditions are coloured by the nature of their earthly occupations, and the opinions they thence entertained on the subject of good and evil.
“This remark is fully verified by the history of the American Indians. ‘The belief most firmly established among the American Savages,’ says Charlevoix, ‘is that of the immortality of the soul. They suppose that when separated from the body, it preserves the same inclinations which it had when both were united. For this reason, they bury with the dead all that they had in use when alive. Some imagine that all men have two souls, one of which never leaves the body, unless it be to inhabit another. This transmigration, however, is peculiar to the souls of those who die in infancy, and who therefore have the privilege of commencing a second life, because they enjoyed so little of the first. Hence children are buried along the highways, that the women as they pass may receive their souls. From this idea of their remaining with the body, arises the duty of placing food upon their graves;[44] and mothers have been seen to draw from their bosoms that nourishment which these little creatures loved when alive, and shed it upon the earth which covered their remains.’”[45]
“When the time has arrived for the departure of those spirits which leave the body, they pass into a region which is destined to be their eternal abode, and which is therefore called the country of souls. This country is at a great distance towards the West, and to go thither costs them a journey of many months. They have many difficulties to surmount, and many perils to encounter. They speak of a stream in which many suffer shipwreck; of a dog from which they with difficulty defend themselves; of a place of suffering where they expiate their faults; of another in which the souls of those prisoners who have been tortured are again tormented, and who therefore linger on their course, to delay as long as possible the moment of their arrival. From this idea it proceeds that after the death of these unhappy victims, for fear their souls may remain around the huts of their tormentors from the thirst of vengeance, the latter are careful to strike every place around them with a staff, and to utter such terrible cries as may oblige them to depart.”[46]
“To be put to death as a captive, is, therefore, an exclusion from the Indian paradise; and, indeed, the souls of all who have died a violent death, even in war, and in the service of their country, are supposed to have no intercourse in the future world with other souls. They, therefore, burn the bodies of such persons, or bury them, sometimes before they have expired. They are never put into the common place of interment, and they have no part in that solemn ceremony which the Hurons and the Iroquois observe every ten years, and other nations every eight, of depositing all who have died during that period in a common place of sepulture.
“To have been a good hunter, brave in war, fortunate in every enterprise, and victorious over many enemies, are the only titles to enter their abode of bliss. The happiness of it consists in the never-failing supply of game and fish, an eternal spring, and an abundance of every thing which can delight the senses without the labour of procuring it. Such are the pleasures which they anticipate, who often return weary and hungry from the chase, who are often exposed to the inclemencies of a winter sky, and who look upon all labour as an unmanly and degrading employment.
“The Chippewayans live between the parallels of lat. 60 and 65 north, a region of almost perpetual snows; where the ground never thaws, and is so barren as to produce nothing but moss.[47]
“To them, therefore, perpetual verdure and fertility, and waters unincumbered with ice, are voluptuous images. Hence they imagine that, after death, they shall inhabit a most beautiful island in the centre of a most extensive lake. On the surface of this lake they will embark in a stone canoe, and if their actions have been generally good, will be borne by a gentle current to their delightful and eternal abode. But if, on the contrary, their bad actions predominate, the stone canoe sinks, and leaves them up to their chins in the water to behold and regret the reward enjoyed by the good, and eternally struggling, but with unavailing endeavours, to reach the blissful island from which they are excluded for ever.[48]
“On the other hand the Arrowauks, or natives of Cuba, Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Jamaica, and Trinidad, would naturally place their enjoyments in every thing that was opposite to the violence of a tropical climate. They suppose, therefore, that the spirits of good men were conveyed to the pleasant valley of Coyaba; a place of indolent tranquillity, abounding with Guavas and other delicious fruits, cool shades, and murmuring rivulets; in a country where drought never rages, and the hurricane is never felt.[49]
“While these voluptuous people made the happiness of the future state to consist in these tranquil enjoyments, their fierce enemies, the Charaibes, looked forward to a paradise, in which the brave would be attended by their wives and captives. The degenerate and the cowardly they doomed to everlasting banishment beyond the mountains; to unremitting labour in employments that disgrace manhood—disgrace heightened by the greatest of all afflictions, captivity and servitude among the Arrowauks.”[50]