An instance lately happened, which sufficiently shews their utter aversion to blood. A Chikkesah woman, a domestic of one of the traders, being very ill with a complication of disorders, the Indian physician seemed to use his best endeavours to cure her, but without the least visible effect. {134} To preserve his medical credit with the people, he at last ascribed her ailment to the eating of swine’s flesh, blood, and other polluting food: and said, that such an ugly, or accursed sickness, overcame the power of all his beloved songs, and physic; and in anger, he left his supposed criminal patient to be punished by Loak Ishtohoollo. I asked her some time afterwards, what her ailments were, and what she imagined might have occasioned them? She said, she was full of pain, that she had _Abeeka Ookproo_, “the accursed sickness,” because she had eaten a great many fowls after the manner of the white people, with the _Issish Ookproo_, “accursed blood,” in them. In time she recovered, and now strictly abstains from tame fowls, unless they are bled to death, for fear of incurring future evil, by the like pollution. There is not the least trace among their ancient traditions, of their deserving the hateful name of cannibals, as our credulous writers have carefully copied from each other. Their taste is so opposite to that of the Anthrophagi, that they always over-dress their meat whether roasted or boiled.[51] The Muskoghe who have been at war, time out of mind, against the Indians of Cape-Florida, and at length reduced them to thirty men, who removed to the Havannah along with the Spaniards; affirm, they could never be informed by their captives, of the least inclination they ever had of eating human flesh, only the heart of the enemy—which they all do, sympathetically (blood for blood) in order to inspire them with courage; and yet the constant losses they suffered, might have highly provoked them to exceed their natural barbarity. To eat the heart of an enemy will in their opinion, like eating other things, before mentioned, communicate and give greater heart against the enemy. They also think that the vigorous faculties of the mind are derived from the brain, on which account, I have seen some of their heroes drink out of a human skull; they imagine, they only imbibe the good qualities it formerly contained.