e from the
trueth, yet being as it is, there is hope it may be the easier and sooner
reformed.

They beleeue that there are many gods, which they call Mantoac, but of
different sorts and degrees, one onely chiefe and great God, which hath
beene from all eternitie. Who as they affirme, when hee purposed to make
the world, made first other gods of a principall order, to be as meanes
and instruments to be vsed in the creation and gouernment to follow, and
after the Sunne, moone, and starres as pettie gods, and the instruments of
the other order more principal. First (they say) were made waters out of
which by the gods were made all diuersitie of creatures that are visible
or invisible.

For mankinde they say a woman was made first, which by the working of one
of the gods, conceiued and brought foorth children: And in such sort they
say they had their beginning. But how many yeeres or ages haue passed
since, they say they can make no relation hauing no letters or other such
meanes as we to keepe records of the particularities of times past, but
onely tradition from father to sonne.

They thinke that all the gods are of humane shape, and therefore they
represent them by images in the formes of men, which they call Kewasowok,
one alone is called Kewas: them they place in houses appropriate or
temples, which they call Machicomuck, where they worship, pray, sing, and
make many times offring vnto them. In some Machicomuck we haue seene but
one Kewas, in some two, and in other some three. The common sort thinke
them to be also gods.

They beleeue also the immortalitie of the soule, that after this life as
soone as the soule is departed from the body, according to the workes it
hath done, it is either carried to heauen the habitacle of the gods, there
to enioy perpetuall blisse and happinesse or els to a great pitte or hole,
which they thinke to be in the furthest parts of their part of the world
toward the Sunne set, there to burne continually: the place they call
Popogusso.

For the confirmation of this opinion, they tolde me two stories of two men
that had bene lately dead and reuiued againe, the one happened but few
yeeres before our comming into the Countrey of a wicked man, which hauing
bene dead and buried, the next day the earth of the graue being seene to
moue, was taken vp againe, who made declaration where his soule had bene,
that is to say, very neere entring into Popogusso, had not one of the gods
saued him, and