The more religious, or the least corrupted, of the various remote Indian nations, will not eat of any young beast when it is newly yeaned; and their old men think they would suffer damage, even by the bare contact: which seems to be derived from the Mosaic law, that prohibited such animals to be offered up, or eaten, till they were eight days old; because, till then, they were in an imperfect and polluted state! They appear, however, to be utterly ignorant of the design and meaning of this appointment and practice, as well as of some other customs and institutions. But as the time of circumcising the Israelitish children was founded on this law of purity, it seems probable, that the American Aborigines observed the law of circumcision,[52] for some time after they arrived here, and desisted from it, when it became incompatible with the hard daily toils and sharp exercises, which necessity must have forced them to pursue, to support life: especially when we consider, that the sharpest and most lasting affront, the most opprobious, indelible epithet, with which one Indian can possibly brand another, is to call him in public company, _Hoobuk Waske_, Eunuchus, præputio detecto. They resent it so highly, that in the year {136} 1750, when the Cheerakee were on the point of commencing a war against us, several companies of the northern Indians, in concert with them, compelled me in the lower Cheerakee town to write to the government of South-Carolina, that they made it their earnest request to the English not to mediate in their war with the Katáhba Indians, as they were fully resolved to prosecute it, with the greatest eagerness, while there was one of that hateful name alive; because in the time of battle, they had given them the ugly name of short-tailed eunuchs. Now as an eunuch was a contemptible name with the Israelites, and none of them could serve in any religious office; it should seem that the Indians derived this opprobious and singular epithet from Jewish tradition, as castration was never in use among the ancient or present Americans.