When I was on my way to the Chikkasah, at the Okchai, in the year 1745, the conduct of the Muskohge Indians was exactly the same with regard to a Cheerake stripling, whose father was a white man, and mother an half-breed,—regardless of the pressing entreaties and very high offers of the English traders, they burned him in their usual manner. This seems to be copied from that law which expressly forbad the redeeming any devoted persons, and ordered that they should be surely put to death, Lev. xxvii. 29. This precept had evidently a reference to the law of retaliation.—Saul in superstitious and angry mood, wanted to have murdered or sacrificed to God his favourite son Jonathan, because when he was fainting he tasted some honey which casually fell in his way, just after he had performed a prodigy of martial feats in behalf of Israel: but the gratitude, and reason of the people, prevented him from perpetrating that horrid murder. If devoting to death was a divine extraction, or if God delighted in human sacrifices, the people would have been criminal for daring to oppose the divine law,—which was not the case. Such a law if taken in an extensive and literal sense, is contrary to all natural reason and religion, and consequently in a strict sense, could not be enjoined by a benevolent and merciful God; who commands us to do justice and shew mercy to the very beasts; not to muzzle the ox while he is treading out the grain; nor to insnare the bird when performing her parental offices. “Are ye not of more value than many sparrows?” The Indians use no stated ceremony in immolating their devoted captives, although it is the same thing to the unfortunate victims, what form their butcherers use. They are generally sacrificed before their conquerors set off for war with their ark and supposed holy things. And sometimes the Indians devote every one they meet in certain woods or paths, to be killed there, except their own people; this occasioned the cowardly Cheerake in the year 1753, to kill two white men on the Chikkasah war-path, which leads from the country of the Muskohge. And the Shawànoh Indians who {155} settled between the _Ooe-Asa_ and _Koosah-towns_,[58] told us that their people to the northward had devoted the English to death for the space of six years; but when that time was expired and not before, they would live in friendship as formerly. If the English had at that time executed their own law against them, and demanded equal blood from the Cheeràke, and stopt all trade with them before they dipt themselves too deep in blood, they would soon have had a firm peace with all the Indian nations. This is the only way of treating them now, for when they have not the fear of offending, they will shed innocent blood, and proceed in the end to lay all restraint aside.