priest of war, and the other to carry the awful sacred ark. All the while they are at war, the _Hetissu_, or “beloved waiter,” feeds each of the warriors by an exact stated rule, giving them even the water they drink, out of his own hands, lest by intemperance they should spoil the supposed communicative power of their holy things, and occasion fatal disasters to the war camp. The ark, mercy-seat, and cherubim, were the very essence of the levitical law, and often called “the testimonies of _Yohewah_.” The ark of the temple was termed his throne, and David calls it his foot-stool. In speaking of the Indian places of refuge for the unfortunate, I observed, that if a captive taken by the reputed power of the beloved things of the ark, should be able to make his escape into one of these towns,—or even into the winter-house of the Archi-magus, he is delivered from the fiery torture, otherwise inevitable. This when joined to the rest of the faint images of the Mosaic customs they still retain, seems to point at the mercy-seat in the sanctuary. It is also highly worthy of notice, that they {161} never place the ark on the ground, nor sit on the bare earth while they are carrying it against the enemy. On hilly ground where stones are plenty, they place it on them: but in level land upon short logs, always resting themselves on the like materials. Formerly, when this tract was the Indian Flanders of America, as the French and all their red Canadian confederates were bitter enemies to the inhabitants, we often saw the woods full of such religious war-reliques. The former is a strong imitation of the pedestal, on which the Jewish ark was placed, a stone rising three fingers breadth above the floor. And when we consider—in what a surprising manner the Indians copy after the ceremonial law of the Hebrews, and their strict purity in their war camps; that _Opae_, “the leader,” obliges all during the first campaign they make with the beloved ark, to stand, every day they lie by, from sun-rise to sun-set—and after a fatiguing day’s march, and scanty allowance, to drink warm water imbittered with rattle-snake-root very plentifully, in order to be purified—that they have also as strong a faith of the power and holiness of their ark, as ever the Israelites retained of their’s, ascribing the superior success of the party, to their stricter adherence to the law than the other; and after they return home, hang it on the leader’s red-painted war pole—we have strong reason to conclude their origin is Hebrew. From the Jewish ark of the tabernacle and the temple, the ancient heathens derived their arks, their _cistæ_ or religious chests, their Teraphim or Dii Lares, and their tabernacles and temples. But their modes and objects of worship, differed very widely from those of the Americans.