Adair's History of the American IndiansAdair, James
History
Adair's History of the American Indians
Adair, James
Indians -- Origin; Indians of North America -- Southern States
The warm-constitutioned young widows keep their eye so intent on this
mild beneficent law, that they frequently treat their elder
brothers-in-law with spirituous liquors till they intoxicate them, and
thereby decoy them to make free, and so put themselves out of the reach
of that mortifying law. If they are disappointed, as it sometimes
happens, they fall on the men, calling them _Hoobuk Wakse_, or
_Skoobále, Hassé kroopha_, “Eunuchus præputio detecto, et pene brevi;”
the most degrading of epithets. Similar to the Hebrew ladies, who on the
brother’s refusal loosed his shoe from his foot, and spit in his face,
(Deut. xxv. 9.); and as some of the Rabbies tell us they made water in
the shoe, and threw it with despite in his face, and then readily went
to bed to any of his kinsmen, or most distant relations of the same line
that she liked best; as Ruth married Boaz. Josephus, to palliate the
fact, says she only beat him with the shoe over his face. David probably
alludes to this custom, Psal. lx. 8. “Over Edom I will cast out my
shoe,” or detraction.
Either by corruption, or misunderstanding that family-kissing custom of
the Hebrews, the corrupt Cheerake marry both mother and daughter at
once; though, unless in this instance, they and all the other savage
nations observe the degrees of consanguinity in a stricter manner than
the Hebrews, or even the Christian world. The Cheerake do not marry
their first or second cousins;[84] and it is very observable, that the
whole tribe reckon a friend in the same rank with a brother, both with
regard to marriage, and any other affair in social life. This seems to
evince that they copied from the stable and tender friendship between
Jonathan and David; especially as the Hebrews had legal, or adopted, as
well as natural brothers. {190}
ARGUMENT XXII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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