Wesley Corpus

By the most diligent inquiry from those who had spent many years among them, I could never learn that any of the Indian nations who border on Georgia and Carolina have any public worship of any kind, nor any private; for they have no idea of prayer. It is not without much difficulty that one can make any of them understand what is meant by prayer; and when they do, they cannot be made to apprehend that God will answer or even hear it. They say, “He that sitteth in heaven is too high; he is too far off to hear us.” In consequence of which they leave him to himself, and manage their affairs without him. Only the Chicasaws, of all the Indian nations, are an excep tion to this. I believe it will be found, on the strictest inquiry, that the whole body of southern Indians, as they have no letters and no laws, so, properly speaking, have no religion at all; so that every one does what he sees good; and if it appears wrong to his neighbour, he usually comes upon him unawares, and shoots or scalps him alive. They are likewise all (Icould never find any exception) gluttons, drunkards, thieves, dissemblers, liars. They are implacable ; never forgiving an injury or affront, or being satisfied with less than blood. They are wn merciful ; killing all whom they take prisoners in war, with the most exquisite tortures. They are murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, murderers of their own children; it being a common thing for a son, to shoot his father or mother because they are old and past labour; and for a woman either to procure abortion, or to throw her child into the next river, because she will go to the war with her husband. Indeed, husbands, properly speaking, they have none; for any man leaves his wife, so called, at pleasure; who frequently, in re turn, cuts the throats of all the children she has had by him. The Chicasaws alone seem to have some notion of an inter course between man and a superior Being. They speak much of their beloved ones ; with whom they say they converse both day and night.