The Indians, beyond all the rest of mankind, seem in this respect to be actuated with the Jewish spirit. They jeer, taunt, laugh, whoop, and rejoice at the inexpressible agonies of those unfortunate persons, who are under their butchering hands; which would excite pity and horror in any heart, but that of a Jew. When they are far from home, they keep as near to their distinguishing customs, as circumstances allow them: not being able formerly to cut off the heads of those they killed in war, for want of proper weapons; nor able to carry them three or four hundred miles without putrefaction, they cut off the skin of their heads with their flint-stone knives, as speaking trophies of honour, and which register them among the brave by procuring them war titles. Though now they have plenty of proper weapons, they vary not from this ancient barbarous custom of the American aborigines: which has been too well known by many of our northern colonists, and is yet shamefully so to South-Carolina and Georgia barriers, by the hateful name of scalping. The Indians strictly adhere more than the rest of mankind to that positive, unrepealed law of Moses, “He who sheddeth man’s blood, by {147} man shall his blood be shed:” like the Israelites, their hearts burn violently day and night without intermission, till they shed blood for blood. They transmit from father to son, the memory of the loss of their relation, or one of their own tribe or family, though it were an old woman—if she was either killed by the enemy, or by any of their own people. If indeed the murder be committed by a kinsman, the eldest can redeem: however, if the circumstances attending the fact be peculiar and shocking to nature, the murderer is condemned to die the death of a sinner, “without any one to mourn for him,” as in the case of suicide; contrary to their usage toward the rest of their dead, and which may properly be called the death or burial of a Jewish ass.