VIII.

CONCERNING THE RELIGION, WORSHIP, AND SUPERSTITIOUS CUSTOMS OF THE
INDIANS.

Sec. 29. I don't pretend to have dived into all the mysteries of the Indian
religion, nor have I had such opportunities of learning them as father
Henepin and Baron Lahontan had, by living much among the Indians in
their towns; and because my rule is to say nothing but what I know to be
truth, I shall be very brief upon this head.

In the writings of those two gentlemen, I cannot but observe direct
contradictions, although they traveled the same country, and the
accounts they pretend to give are of the same Indians. One makes them
have very refined notions of a Deity, and the other don't allow them so
much as the name of a God. For which reason, I think myself obliged
sincerely to deliver what I can warrant to be true upon my own
knowledge; it being neither my interest, nor any part of my vanity, to
impose upon the world.

I have been at several of the Indian towns, and conversed with some of
the most sensible of them in Virginia; but I could learn little from
them, it being reckoned sacrilege to divulge the principles of their
religion. However, the following adventure discovered something of it.
As I was ranging the woods, with some other friends, we fell upon their
quioccosan, (which is their house of religious worship,) at a time when
the whole town were gathered together in another place, to consult about
the bounds of the land given them by the English.

Thus finding ourselves masters of so fair an opportunity, (because we
knew the Indians were engaged,) we resolved to make use of it, and to
examine their quioccosan, the inside of which they never suffer any
Englishmen to see; and having removed about fourteen logs from the door,
with which it was barricaded, we went in, and at first found nothing but
naked walls, and a fireplace in the middle. This house was about
eighteen feet wide, and thirty feet long, built after the manner of
their other cabins, but larger, with a hole in the middle of the roof to
vent the smoke, the door being at one end. Round about the house, at
some distance from it, were set up posts, with faces carved on them, and
painted. We did not observe any window or passage for the light, except
the door and the vent of the chimney. At last we observed, that at the
farther end, about ten feet of the room was cut off by a partition of
very close mats, and it was dismal dark behind that partition. We were
a