But the Indians detest this opinion, and pretend that this violent method of taking away the memory, is to release the youth from all their childish impressions, and from that strong partiality to persons and things, which is contracted before reason comes to take place. They hope by this proceeding, to root out all the prepossessions and unreasonable prejudices which are fixed in the minds of children. So that, when the young men come to themselves again, their reason may act freely, without being biased by the cheats of custom and education. Thus, also, they become discharged from the remembrance of any ties by blood, and are established in a state of equality and perfect freedom, to order their actions, and dispose of their persons, as they think fit, without any other control than that of the law of nature. By this means also they become qualified, when they have any public office, equally and impartially to administer justice, without having respect either to friend or relation. Puffend. p. 7, book I. A proselyte of justice of the Jews had a new soul.
§ 34. The Indians offer sacrifice almost upon every new occasion; as when they travel or begin a long journey, they burn tobacco instead of incense, to the sun, to bribe him to send them fair weather, and a prosperous voyage. When they cross any great water, or violent fresh, or torrent, they throw in tobacco, puccoon, peak, or some other valuable thing, that they happen to have about them, to intreat the spirit presiding there to grant them a safe passage. It is called a fresh, when after very great rains, or (as we suppose) after a great thaw of the snow and ice lying upon the mountains to the westward, the water descends in such abundance into the rivers, that they overflow the banks, which bound their streams at other times.
Likewise, when the Indians return from war, from hunting, from great journeys or the like, they offer some proportion of their spoils, of their chiefest tobacco, furs and paint, as also the fat, and choice bits of their game.
§ 35. I never could learn that they had any certain time or set days for their solemnities; but they have appointed feasts that happen according to the several seasons. They solemnize a day for the plentiful coming of their wild fowl, such as geese, ducks, teal, &c., for the returns of their hunting seasons, and for the ripening of certain fruits; but the greatest annual feast they have, is at the time of their corn-gathering, at which they revel several days together. To these they universally contribute, as they do to the gathering in the corn. On this occasion, they have their greatest variety of pastimes, and more especially of their war-dances and heroic songs; in which they boast, that their corn being now gathered, they have store enough for their women and children, and have nothing to do, but to go to war, travel, and to seek out for new adventures.
§ 36. They make their account by units, tens, hundreds, &c., as we do; but they reckon the years by the winters, or cobonks, as they call them; which is a name taken from the note of the wild-geese, intimating so many times of the wild geese coming to them, which is every winter. They distinguish the several parts of the year, by five seasons, viz: the budding or blossoming of the spring; the earing of the corn, or roasting-ear time; the summer, or highest sun; the corn-gathering or fall of the leaf, and the winter, or cobonks. They count the months likewise by the moons, though not with any relation to so many in a year, as we do; but they make them return again by the same name, as the moon of stags, the corn moon, the first and second moon of cobonks, &c. They have no distinction of the hours of the day, but divide it only into three parts, the rise, power, and lowering of the sun. And they keep their account by knots on a string, or notches on a stick, not unlike the Peruvian quippoes.
§ 37. In this state of nature, one would think they should be as pure from superstition, and overdoing matters in religion, as they are in other things; but I find it is quite the contrary; for this simplicity gives the cunning priest a greater advantage over them, according to the Romish maxim, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion." For, no bigotted pilgrim appears more zealous, or strains his devotion more at the shrine, than these believing Indians do, in their idolatrous adorations. Neither do the most refined Catholics undergo their pennance with so much submission, as these poor Pagans do the severities which their priests inflict upon them.
They have likewise in other cases many fond and idle superstitions, as for the purpose. By the falls of James river upon Colonel Byrd's land, there lies a rock which I have seen, about a mile from the river, wherein are fairly imprest several marks like the footsteps of a gigantic man, each step being about five feet asunder. These they aver to be the track of their God.
This is not unlike what the fathers of the Romish Church tell us, that our Lord left the print of His feet on the stone, whereon he stood while he talked with St. Peter; which stone was afterward preserved as a very sacred relic; and after several translations, was at last fixed in the Church of St. Sebastian, the martyr, where it is kept, and visited with great expressions of devotion. So that the Indians, as well as these, are not without their pious frauds.
§ 38. As the people have a great reverence for the priest, so the priest very oddly endeavours to preserve their respect, by being as hideously ugly as he can, especially when he appears in public; for besides, that the cut of his hair is peculiar to his function, as in tab. 4, book 3, and the hanging of his cloak, with the fur reversed and falling down in flakes, looks horridly shagged, he likewise bedaubs himself in that frightful manner with paint, that he terrifies the people into a veneration for him.
The conjuror is a partner with the priest, not only in the cheat, but in the advantages of it, and sometimes they officiate for one another. When this artist is in the act of conjuration, or of pauwawing, as they term it, he always appears with an air of haste, or else in some convulsive posture, that seems to strain all the faculties, like the Sybils, when they appeared to be under the power of inspiration. At these times, he has a black bird with expanded wings fastened to his ear, differing in nothing but color, from Mahomet's pigeon. He has no clothing but a small skin before, and a pocket at his girdle, as in tab. 4, book 3.