to lodge a friend or stranger,
Where Jewes and Christians oft have sent
Christ Jesus to the manger.”
[241] In regard to the games and removals of the Indians, see Williams’s Key, chs. xi. and xxviii.; Smith’s True Travels, vol. i. p. 133; Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 153; and Wood’s Prospect; pp. 63, 73-5. Wood gives an excellent description of the Indian game of foot-ball: “Their goals be a mile long placed on the sands, which are as even as a board; their ball is no bigger than a hand-ball, which sometimes they mount in the air with their naked feet, sometimes it is swayed by the multitude; sometimes also it is two days before they get a goal; then they mark the ground they win, and begin the next day.... Though they play never so fiercely to outward appearance, yet anger-boiling blood never streams in their cooler veins; if any man be thrown, he laughs out his foil, there is no seeking of revenge, no quarrelling, no bloody noses, scratched faces, black eyes, broken shins, no bruised members or crushed ribs, the lamentable effects of rage; but the goal being won, the goods on the one side lost; friends they were at the foot-ball, and friends they must meet at the kettle.” To the same effect see Strachey’s Historie, p. 78.
[242] Ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens est neque tam immansueta, neque tam fera, quæ non, etiam si ignoret qualem habere deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat (De Legibus, Lib. I. § 8).
Quæ est enim gens, aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat sine doctrinâ anticipationem quandam deorum? (De Natura Deorum, Lib. I. § 16).
[243] The reference here is to Wood’s New England’s Prospect (p. 70). In regard to the time when this work was written and published, see Mr. Deane’s preface to the edition in the publications of the Prince Society. Morton makes numerous references to it in the New Canaan (infra, [*38], [53], [64], [84], [99]). The present reference is one of the few unintelligible passages in the book. Wood’s language, to which Morton apparently takes exception, is as follows: “As it is natural to all mortals to worship something, so do these people; but exactly to describe to whom their worship is chiefly bent, is very difficult; they acknowledge especially two, Ketan, who is their good God, to whom they sacrifice after their garners be full with a good crop: upon this God likewise they invocate for fair weather, for rain in time of drought, and for the recovery of their sick; but if they do not hear them, then they verify the old verse, Flectere si nequeo Superes, Acheronta movebo, their Pow-wows betaking themselves to their exorcisms and unromantick charms ... by God’s permission, through the Devil’s help, their charms are of force to produce effects of wonderment.” Morton would seem to have wished to depreciate Wood, as an authority on New England, and so, playing upon his name and the title of his book, he implied that he had taken a much more elevated view of the religious development of the Indians than could be justified either by the actual facts, or the judgment of the best informed.
Being unintelligible, the passage, from the word “neither” to the end of the paragraph, is reproduced here in all respects, including punctuation, as it is in the text of the original edition.
[244] There is no expression of this nature to be found anywhere in those writings of Sir William Alexander which have come down to us and are included in the publications of the Prince Society. He may have used the expression quoted in conversation, or in a letter. Winslow, in Mourt, says: “They [the savages] are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God” (p. 61). This statement he subsequently, however, retracted in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 355), where he says, “therein I erred, though we could then gather no better.”
The subject of the religion of the North American aborigines has been treated by Parkman in the introduction to the Jesuits in North America (pp. lxvii.-lxxxix.), and he concludes that “the primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to an All-pervading grand Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians and sentimentalists.” To the same effect Palfrey, at the close of his vigorous discussion of the same subject (vol. i. p. 45), declares that the devout Indian of the “untutored mind is as fabulous as the griffin or the centaur.”