Here all the fighting men and
sages assemble. Eloquence and superstition combine to inflame the minds
of the warriors. The orator awakens their martial ardor, and they are
wrought up to a kind of religious desperation by the visions of the
prophet and the dreamer.
An instance of one of those sudden exasperations, arising from a
motive peculiar to the Indian character, is extant in an old record of
the early settlement of Massachusetts. The planters of Plymouth had
defaced the monuments of the dead at Passonagessit, and had plundered
the grave of the sachem's mother of some skins with which it had been
decorated. The Indians are remarkable for the reverence which they
entertain for the sepulchers of their kindred. Tribes that have passed
generations exiled from the abodes of their ancestors, when by chance
they have been traveling in the vicinity, have been known to turn aside
from the highway, and guided by wonderfully accurate tradition have
crossed the country for miles to some tumulus, buried perhaps in woods,
where the bones of their tribe were anciently deposited, and there have
passed hours in silent meditation.
Pages:
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798