Their priests and conjurors are highly reverenced by them. They are given extremely to pawning or conjuring; and one of them very lately conjured a shower of rain for a gentleman’s plantation, in a time of drought, for two bottles of rum. We are not apt to give credit to such supernatural events; and, had we not found this in an author who was on the spot, we should have rejected it as a fable.
Their priests promise fine women, eternal spring, and every pleasure in perfection in the
other world, which charmed them in this; and threaten them with lakes of fire, and torments by a fairy in the shape of an old woman. They are often bloody in their sacrifices, and offer up young children to the devil. They have a superstitious ceremony among them, which they call Huskanawing, and is performed thus: they shut up ten or twelve young men, the most deserving among them, about twenty years of age, in a strong inclosure, made on purpose, like a sugar loaf, and every way open like a lattice, for the air to pass through; they are kept for several months, and are allowed to have no sustenance but the infusion or decoction of poisonous intoxicating roots, which turn their brains, and they run stark mad.
By this it is pretended they lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, treasure, and language, as if they had drunk of the water of oblivion, drawn out of the lake of Lethe. When they have been in this condition as long as their custom directs, they lessen this intoxicating potion; and, by degrees, the young men recover the use of their senses; but before they are quite well, they are shown in their towns; and the youths who have been huskanawed are afraid to discover the least sign of their remembering any thing of their past lives; for, in such a case, they must be huskanawed again, and they are disciplined so severely the second time, that it generally kills them.
After the young men have passed this trial, they are Coucarouses, or men of quality in their nations; and the Indians say they do it to take away
from youth all childish impressions, and that strong partiality to persons and things which is contracted before reason takes place.
The Indian priests, to command the respect of the people, make themselves look as ugly and as terrible as they can; the conjurors always share with them in their deceit, and they gain by it; the Indians consult both of them before they go on any enterprise. There are no priestesses or witches among them. They erect altars on every remarkable occasion, and have temples built like their common cabins, in which their idol stands, and the corpses of their kings and rulers are preserved.
They have no sort of literature among them; and their way of communicating things from one to another is by hieroglyphics. They make their accounts by units, tens, hundreds, &c., as the English do; but they reckon their years by cohonks, or winters, and divide every year into five seasons; the budding time, the earing of the corn, the summer, the harvest, and the winter.
Their months they count by moons. They divide the day into three parts, the rise, power, and lowering, of the sun; and keep their accounts by knots on a string, or notches on a stick, of which Captain Smith relates a very pleasant story; that, when the princess Pocahonta went for England, a Coucarouse, or lord of her own nation, attended her; his name was Uttamaccomack: and king Powhatan, Pocahonta’s father, commanded him, when he arrived in England, to count the people, and give him an account of their number. Uttamaccomock, when he came ashore, got a stick, intending to count them by notches; but he
soon found that his arithmetic would be to no purpose, and threw away his stick. At his return, the king asked him how many people there were? and he replied, count the stars of the sky, the leaves upon the trees, and the sand upon the seashore, and you will know how many are the people in England.