[277] Roger Williams, also, in a passage just quoted (supra, [168], note), speaks of the future punishment supposed, among the New England Indians, to be allotted to thieves and liars. Josselyn, on the other hand, describes them as “very fingurative or theevish” (Two Voyages, p. 125); and Gookin says: “They are naturally much addicted to lying and speaking untruth: and unto stealing, especially from the English” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 149). Winslow describes the severe punishments inflicted for theft (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 364). Dodge, in his Wild Indians (pp. 63-5), explains this discrepancy in the authorities. He says: “All these authors are both right and wrong. In their own bands, Indians are perfectly honest.... It [theft] is the sole unpardonable crime among Indians.” He then describes, like Winslow, the severity of the punishments inflicted for thefts; “but,” he adds, “this wonderfully exceptional honesty extends no further than to the members of his immediate band. To all outside of it, the Indian is not only one of the most arrant thieves in the world, but this quality or faculty is held in the highest estimation.”
[278] The reference is to ch. iii. of the Third Booke (infra, [*106-8]). This passage would seem to indicate that the third book of the New Canaan was written first, and that the two other books were prepared subsequently, probably in imitation of Wood’s Prospect. (See supra, [78].)
[279] “Yea, I saw with mine owne eyes that at my late comming forth of the Countrey, the chiefe and most aged peaceable Father of the countrey, Caunoŭnicus, having buried his sonne, he burned his owne Palace, and all his goods in it, (amongst them to a great value) in a sollemne remembrance of his sonne, and in a kind of humble Expiation to the Gods, who, (as they believe) had taken his sonne from him.” (Williams’s Key, ch. xxxii.) In the same passage Williams says: “Upon the Grave is spread the Mat that the party died on, the Dish he ate in, and, sometimes, a faire Coat of skin hung upon the next tree to the Grave, which none will touch, but suffer it there to rot with the dead.” See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 142, 143, 154, 363; Strachey’s Historie, p. 90.
“In times of general Mortality they omit the Ceremonies of burying, exposing their dead Carkases to the Beasts of prey. But at other times they dig a Pit and set the diseased therein upon his breech upright, and, throwing in the earth, cover it with the sods and bind them down with sticks, driving in two stakes at each end; their mournings are somewhat like the howlings of the Irish, seldom at the grave but in the Wigwam where the party dyed, blaming the Devil for his hard-heartedness, and concluding with rude prayers to him to afflict them no further.” (Josselyn, Two Voyages, p. 132.) There is a highly characteristic passage to the same effect in Wood’s Prospect, p. 79.
[281] The reference is to Wood’s New England’s Prospect, p. 13; where, also, the Indian custom of firing the country in November is described.
[282] Gookin says: “This beastly sin of drunkenness could not be charged upon the Indians before the English and other Christian nations, as Dutch, French, and Spaniards, came to dwell in America: which nations, especially the English in New-England, have cause to be greatly humbled before God, that they have been, and are, instrumental to cause these Indians to commit this great evil and beastly sin of drunkenness.” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151.)
In regard to the peculiarities of Indian drunkenness, see Dodge’s Wild Indians, pp. 333-5. What is there said of the Indians of “the plains” is probably true of all the northern American Indians. “This passion for intoxication amounts almost to an insanity.... To drink liquor as a beverage, for the gratification of taste, or for the sake of pleasurable conviviality, is something of which the Indian can form no conception. His idea of pleasure in the use of strong drink is to get drunk, and the quicker and more complete that effect, the better he likes it.”
[283] “They live in a country where we now have all the conveniences of human life: but as for them, their housing is nothing but a few mats tyed about poles fastened in the earth, where a good fire is their bed-clothes in the coldest seasons; their clothing is but a skin of a beast, covering their hind-parts, their fore-parts having but a little apron, where nature calls for secrecy; their diet has not a greater dainty than their Nokehick, that is a spoonful of their parched meal, with a spoonful of water, which will strengthen them to travel a day to-gether; except we should mention the flesh of deers, bears, mose, rackoons, and the like, which they have when they can catch them; as also a little fish, which, if they would preserve, it was by drying, not by salting; for they had not a grain of salt in the world, I think, till we bestowed it on them.” Magnalia, B. III. part iii. In his Letters and Notes on the North American Indians (Letter No. 17) Catlin comments on the failure of the Indians to make any use of salt, even in localities where it abounds. See supra, [161].
[284] The relations supposed to exist between the Indians and the devil have been referred to in a previous note, supra, [150]. It is, however, a somewhat curious fact that the aboriginal hierarchy, suggested in the text, had a few years before found its exact political counterpart in the talk of the English people. “‘Who governs the land?’ it was asked. ‘Why, the King.’ ‘And who governs the King?’ ‘Why, the Duke of Buckingham.’ ‘And who governs the Duke?’ ‘Why, the Devil.’” (Ewald’s Stories from the State Papers, vol. ii. p. 117.)