The Indians never go about any considerable enterprise, without first consulting their priests and conjurers, for the most ingenious amongst them are brought up to those functions, and by that means become better instructed in their histories, than the rest of the people. They likewise engross to themselves all the knowledge of nature, which is handed to them by tradition from their forefathers; by which means they are able to make a truer judgment of things, and consequently are more capable of advising those that consult them upon all occasions. These reverend gentlemen are not so entirely given up to their religious austerities, but they sometimes take their pleasure (as well as the laity) in fishing, fowling and hunting.
§ 39. The Indians have posts fixed round their Quioccassan, which have men's faces carved upon them, and are painted. They are likewise set up round some of their other celebrated places, and make a circle for them to dance about on certain solemn occasions. They very often set up pyramidal stones and pillars, which they color with puccoon, and other sorts of paint, and which they adorn with peak, roenoke, &c. To these they pay all outward signs of worship and devotion, not as to God, but as they are hieroglyphics of the permanency and immutability of the Deity; because these, both for figure and substance, are of all sublunary bodies, the least subject to decay or change; they also, for the same reason, keep baskets of stones in their cabins. Upon this account too, they offer sacrifice to running streams, which by the perpetuity of their motion, typify the eternity of God.
They erect altars wherever they have any remarkable occasion, and because their principal devotion consists in sacrifice, they have a profound respect for these altars. They have one particular altar, to which, for some mystical reason, many of their nations pay an extraordinary veneration; of this sort was the crystal cube, mentioned book II, chap. 3, § 9. The Indians call this by the name of pawcorance, from whence proceeds the great reverence they have for a small bird that uses the woods, and in their note continually sound that name. This bird flies alone, and is only heard in the twilight. They say, this is the soul of one of their princes; and on that score, they would not hurt it for the world. But there was once a profane Indian in the upper parts of James river, who, after abundance of fears and scruples, was at last bribed to kill one of them with his gun; but the Indians say he paid dear for his presumption; for in a few days after he was taken away, and never more heard of. I have young birds of this kind.
When they travel by any of these altars, they take great care to instruct their children and young people in the particular occasion and time of their erection, and recommend the respect which they ought to have for them; so that their careful observance of these traditions proves almost as good a memorial of such antiquities as written records, especially for so long as the same people continue to inhabit in or near the same place.
I can't understand that their women ever pretended to intermeddle with any offices that relate to the priesthood or conjuration.
§ 40. The Indians are religious in preserving the corpses of their kings and rulers after death, which they order in the following manner: First, they neatly flay off the skin as entire as they can, slitting it only in the back; then they pick all the flesh off from the bones as clean as possible, leaving the sinews fastened to the bones, that they may preserve the joints together; then they dry the bones in the sun, and put them into the skin again, which, in the meantime, has been kept from drying or shrinking; when the bones are placed right in the skin, they nicely fill up the vacuities with a very fine white sand. After this they sew up the skin again, and the body looks as if the flesh had not been removed. They take care to keep the skin from shrinking, by the help of a little oil or grease, which saves it also from corruption. The skin being thus prepared, they lay it in an apartment for that purpose, upon a large shelf raised above the floor. This shelf is spread with mats, for the corpse to rest easy on, and skreened with the same, to keep it from the dust. The flesh they lay upon hurdles in the sun to dry, and when it is thoroughly dried, it is sewed up in a basket, and set at the feet of the corpse, to which it belongs. In this place also they set up a quioccos, or idol, which they believe will be a guard to the corpse. Here night and day one or other of the priests must give his attendance, to take care of the dead bodies. So great an honor and veneration have these ignorant and unpolished people for their princes, even after they are dead.
The mat is supposed to be turned up in the figure, that the inside may be viewed.
Lith. of Ritchies & Dunnavant Richmond.
Tab. 12 Book 3 Pag. 170
Tab. 12. Represents the burial of the kings.