The Rev. David Brainerd, a devout and pious missionary, visited the island in 1745, in the spring while going up the river, and in the fall while returning. His object was to convert the Indians, which he found quite as hopeless a task as did Heckwelder and Loskiel, who preceded him with the same object in view. During his peregrinations Brainerd kept a journal, which, together with his life, was published by the American Tract Society. From this journal we extract the following, in order to give his views of savage life, as well as an interesting account of what he saw and heard at the island:—
Sept. 20.—Visited the Indians again at Juneauta Island, and found them almost universally very busy in making preparations for a great sacrifice and dance. Had no opportunity to get them together in order to discourse with them about Christianity, by reason of their being so much engaged about their sacrifice. My spirits were much sunk with a prospect so very discouraging, and specially seeing I had this day no interpreter but a pagan, who was as much attached to idolatry as any of them, and who could neither speak nor understand the language of these Indians; so that I was under the greatest disadvantages imaginable. However, I attempted to discourse privately with some of them, but without any appearance of success; notwithstanding, I still tarried with them.
The valuable interpreter was probably a Delaware Indian, who was a visitor to take part in the dance and sacrifice, while the inhabitants of the island were Shawnees, who originally came from the south, and their languages were entirely dissimilar. Brainerd calls them "pagans" and "idolaters." This is a charge the Indians used to combat most vehemently. They most unquestionably had small images carved out of wood to represent the Deity; yet they repudiated the idea of worshipping the wood, or the wooden image, merely using it as a symbol through which to worship the Unseen Spirit. If such was the fact, they could not well be called pagans in the common acceptation of the term. The journal goes on to say:—
In the evening they met together, nearly one hundred of them, and danced around a large fire, having prepared ten fat deer for the sacrifice. The fat of the inwards they burnt in the fire while they were dancing, which sometimes raised the flame to a prodigious height, at the same time yelling and shouting in such a manner that they might easily have been heard two miles or more. They continued their sacred dance nearly all night; after which they ate the flesh of the sacrifice, and so retired each one to his own lodging.
Making a burnt-offering of the deer-fat to illuminate the dance, and to make a meat-offering to the insatiate Indian appetite, after undergoing such fatigues, of the roasted venison, had not much idolatry in it. Unconnected with any religious ceremony, such a proceeding might have been considered rational, and coming altogether within the meaning of the Masonic principle which recognises "refreshment after labor." Mr. Brainerd continues:—
Lord's-day, Sep. 21.—Spent the day with the Indians on the island. As soon as they were well up in the morning, I attempted to instruct them, and labored for that purpose to get them together, but soon found they had something else to do; for near noon they gathered together all their powaws, or conjurors, and set about half a dozen of them playing their juggling tricks and acting their frantic, distracted postures, in order to find out why they were then so sickly upon the island, numbers of them being at that time disordered with a fever and bloody flux. In this exercise they were engaged for several hours, making all the wild, ridiculous, and distracted motions imaginable; sometimes singing, sometimes howling, sometimes extending their hands to the utmost stretch and spreading all their fingers: they seemed to push with them as if they designed to push something away, or at least to keep it off at arm's-end; sometimes stroking their faces with their hands, then spouting water as fine as mist; sometimes sitting flat on the earth, then bowing down their faces to the ground; then wringing their sides as if in pain and anguish, twisting their faces, turning up their eyes, grunting, puffing, &c.
This looks more like idolatry than sacrificing ten fat deer and dancing by the light of their burning fat. Yet, if curing disease by powwowing, incantation, or the utterance of charms, can be considered idolatry, we are not without it even at this late day. We need not go out of the Juniata Valley to find professing Christians who believe as much in cures wrought by charms as they do in Holy Writ itself.
"Their monstrous actions tended to excite ideas of horror, and seemed to have something in them, as I thought, peculiarly suited to raise the devil, if he could be raised by any thing odd, ridiculous, and frightful. Some of them, I could observe, were much more fervent and devout in the business than others, and seemed to chant, whoop, and mutter, with a degree of warmth and vigor as if determined to awaken and engage the powers below. I sat at a small distance, not more than thirty feet from them, though undiscovered, with my Bible in my hand, resolving, if possible, to spoil their sport and prevent their receiving any answers from the infernal world, and there viewed the whole scene. They continued their hideous charms and incantations for more than three hours, until they had all wearied themselves out, although they had in that space of time taken several intervals of rest; and at length broke up, I apprehend, without receiving any answer at all."
Very likely they did not; but is it not most singular that a man with the reputation for piety and learning that Brainerd left behind him should arm himself with a Bible to spoil the spirit of the Indians, in case their incantations should raise the demon of darkness, which, it would really appear, he apprehended? In speaking of the Shawnee Indians, or "Shawanose," as they were then called, he stigmatizes them as "drunken, vicious, and profane." What their profanity consisted of he does not say. According to all Indian historians, the Indians had nothing in their language that represented an oath. Brainerd goes on to say of the Shawnees:—
Their customs, in various other respects, differ from those of the other Indians upon this river. They do not bury their dead in a common form, but let their flesh consume above the ground, in close cribs made for that purpose. At the end of a year, or sometimes a longer space of time, they take the bones, when the flesh is all consumed, and wash and scrape them, and afterward bury them with some ceremony. Their method of charming or conjuring over the sick seems somewhat different from that of the other Indians, though in substance the same. The whole of it, among these and others, perhaps, is an imitation of what seems, by Naaman's expression, (2 Kings v. 11,) to have been the custom of the ancient heathen. It seems chiefly to consist of their "striking their hands over the deceased," repeatedly stroking them, "and calling upon their God," except the spurting of water like a mist, and some other frantic ceremonies common to the other conjurations which I have already mentioned.