Native American's Conjur Witches

There is a Kind of Magic or Sorcery, or what else you may please to call it, which, tho’ unknown to us, is yet, it seems, still very much encourag’d by the Devil; but this is a great Way off, and in Countries where the politer Instruments, which he finds here, are not to be had; namely, among the Indians of North-America; This is call’d Pawawing, and they have their Divines, which they call Pawaws or Witches, who use strange Gestures, Distortions, horrid Smokes, Burnings, and Scents, and several such Things which the Sorcerers and Witches in ancient Times are said to use in casting Nativities, in Philtres, and in determining, or as they pretended, directing the Fate of Persons; by burning such and such Herbs and Roots, such as Helebore, Wormwood, Storax, Devilwort, Mandrake, Nightshade, and Abundance more such, which are call’d noxious Plants, or the Product of noxious Plants; also melting such and such Minerals, Gums, and poisonous Things, and by several hellish Mutterings and Markings over them, the like do these Pawaws; and the Devil is pleased, it seems, (or is permitted) to fall in with these Things, and as some People think, appears often to them for their Assistance upon those Occasions.

But be that as it will, he is eas’d of all that Trouble here; he can Pawaw here himself, without their aid, and having laid them all aside, he negotiates much of his Business without Ambassadors; he is his own Plenipotentiary, for he finds Man so easy to come at, and so easy when he is come at, that he stands in no need of secret Emissaries, or at least not so much as he used to do.

Monday, November 21, 2016

The Okee Devil and the Algonquin Indian Mummification Ceremony

Following and in connection with cave burial, the subject of mummifying or embalming the dead may be taken up, as most specimens of the kind have generally been found in such repositories.

It might be both interesting and instructive to search out and discuss the causes which have led many nations or tribes to adopt certain processes with a view to prevent that return to dust which all flesh must sooner or later experience, but the necessarily limited scope of this work precludes more than a brief mention of certain theories advanced by writers of note, and which relate to the ancient Egyptians. Possibly at the time the Indians of America sought to preserve their dead from decomposition, some such ideas may have animated them, but on this point no definite information has been procured. In the final volume an effort will be made to trace out the origin of mummification among the Indians and aborigines of this continent.

According to Pinkerton, who took the account from Smith’s Virginia, the Werowance of Virginia preserved their dead as follows:

In their Temples they have his [their chief God, the Devil’s] image will favourdly carved, and then painted and adorned with chaines of copper, and beads, and covered with a skin, in such manner as the deformity may well suit with such a God. By him is commonly the sepulchre of their Kings. Their bodies are first bowelled, then dried upon hurdles till they be very dry, and so about the most of their joints and neck they hang bracelets, or chains of copper, pearl, and such like, as they use to wear. Their inwards they stuff with copper beads, hatchets, and such trash. Then lappe they them very carefully in white skins, and so roll them in mats for their winding-sheets. And in the Tombe, which is an arch made of mats, they lay them orderly. What remaineth of this kind of wealth their Kings have, they set at their feet in baskets. These temples and bodies are kept by their Priests.

For their ordinary burials, they dig a deep hole in the earth with sharp stakes, and the corpse being lapped in skins and mats with their Jewels they lay them upon sticks in the ground, and so cover them with earth. The burial ended, the women being painted all their faces with black cole and oil doe sit twenty-foure hours in the houses mourning and lamenting by turns with such yelling and howling as may express their great passions. ***

Upon the top of certain red sandy hills in the woods there are three great houses filled with images of their Kings and devils and the tombs of their predecessors. Those houses are near sixty feet in length, built harbourwise after their building. This place they count so holy as that but the priests and Kings dare come into them; nor the savages dare not go up the river in boats by it, but that they solemnly cast
2me piece of copper, white beads or pocones into the river for fear their Okee should be offended and revenged of them.

They think that their Werowances and priests which they also esteem, when they are dead doe goes beyond the mountains towards the setting of the sun, and ever remain there in form of their Okee, with their besds painted red with oil, finely trimmed with feathers, and shall have beads, hatchets, copper, and tobacco, doing nothing but dance and sing with all their predecessors. But the common people they suppose shall not live after death, but rot in their graves like dead dogs.