When an Israelite died in any house or tent, all who were in it, and the furniture belonging to it contracted a pollution, which continued for seven days. All likewise who touched the body of a dead person, or his grave, were impure for seven days. Similar notions prevail among the Indians. The Choktah are so exceedingly infatuated in favour of the infallible judgment of their pretended prophets, as to allow them without the least regret, to dislocate the necks of any of their sick who are in a weak state of body, to put them out of their pain, when they presume to reveal the determined will of the Deity to shorten his days, which is asserted to be communicated in a dream; by the time that this theo-physical operation is performed on a patient, they have a scaffold prepared opposite to the door, whereon he is to lie till they remove the bones in the fourth moon after, to the remote bone-house of that family: they immediately carry out the corpse, mourn over it, and place it in that dormitory, which is strongly pallisadoed around, lest the children should become polluted even by passing under the dead. Formerly when the owner of a house died, they set fire to it, and to all the provisions of every kind; or sold the whole at a cheap rate to the trading people, without paying the least regard to the scarcity of the times. Many of them still observe the same rule, through a wild imitation of a ceremonial observance of the Israelites, in burning the bed whereon a dead person lay, because of its impurity. This is no copy from the ancient heathens, but from the Hebrews. {129} ARGUMENT XII.