decreased. Some
imagine this is owing to that inveterate animosity, with which these so
many petty nations were continually laboring one another's destruction
and extirpation. Others impute it to the introduction by the Europeans,
of the vice of drunkenness, and to the known effect of spirituous
liquors in the excesses of their use, to which they are but too prone,
in striking at the powers of generation, as well as at the principles of
health and life. Not improbably too, numbers impatient of the
encroachments of the Europeans on their country, and dreading the
consequences of them to their liberty, for which they have a passionate
attachment, and incapable of reconciling or assimilating their customs
and manners to ours, have chosen to withdraw further into the western
recesses of the continent, at a distance impenetrable to our approach.

But which ever of these conjectures is the truest, or whether or not all
of these causes have respectively concurred, in a lesser or greater
degree, the fact is certain, that all these northern countries are
considerably thinned of their natives, since the first discovery of them
by the Europeans. Nor have I reason to think, but that this is true of
America in general, wherever they have carried their power, or extended
their influence.

It is also true, that the women of this country are naturally not so
prolific as those of some other parts of the world in the same latitude.
One reason for this may be, their not having their menstrual flux so
copiously, or for so long a time as those of Europe. Yet one would
think, the plurality of wives permitted amongst them, might in some
measure compensate for this defect, which, however, it evidently does
not.

Their women have always observed, not to present themselves at any
public ceremony, or solemnity, whilst under their monthly terms, nor to
admit the embraces of their husbands.

At stated times they repair to particular places in the woods, where
they recite certain formularies of invocation to the _Manitoo_ dictated
to them by some of their oldest _Sagamees_, or principal women, and more
frequently by some celebrated Juggler of the village, that they may
obtain the blessing of fruitfulness. For it is with them, as amongst the
Jews, that barrenness is accounted opprobrious. A woman is not looked
upon as a woman, till she has proved it, by her fulfilling what they
consider as one of the great ends of her creation. Failing in that, s