Near to the red and white imperial seats, they have the representation of a full moon, and either a half moon, or a breastplate, raised five or six feet high at the front of the broad seats, and painted with chalky clay; sometimes black paintings are intermixed. But, let it be noticed, that in the {31} time of their most religious exercises, or their other friendly rejoicings there, they do not pay the least adoration to any of those expressive emblems; nor seem to take any notice of them: which is the very reverse to the usage of all the ancient heathen world. Hence one would conclude, that they not only brought with them the letter, but the meaning of those reputed cherubimical figures, which were designed to represent the inseparable attributes of _Yohewah_. It is universally agreed, by the Christian world, that every religious observance of the ancient heathens, which the Mosaic law approved of, was at first derived from divine appointment; and as we are assured in the first pages of the sacred oracles, concerning Cain, _Gen._ iv. 16. “that he went out from the _presence of the Lord_,” we learn, that God, in that early state of the world, chose a place for his more immediate presence,—פגים, his faces, appearances, or forms residing in, or between, the cherubim. We may, therefore, reasonably conclude, from the various gods, and religious worship of the ancient heathens, and from the remaining divine emblems, and family names of the Indian Americans, that the former deduced those emblems they deifyed, from the compounded cherubim in paradise: and that the Indians derived their cherubic figures, and names of tribes, from the cherubim that covered the mercy-seat, in the tabernacle, and in Solomon’s temple, alluded to and delineated in several parts of the sacred oracles. ARGUMENT III. Agreeable to the THEOCRACY, or divine government of Israel, the Indians think the Deity to be the immediate head of their state. All the nations of Indians are exceedingly intoxicated with religious pride, and have an inexpressible contempt of the white people, unless we except those half-savage Europeans, who are become their proselytes. _Nothings_ is the most favourable name they give us, in set speeches: even the Indians who were formerly bred in amity with us, and in enmity to the French, used to call us, in their war orations, _hottuk ookproose_, “The accursed people.” But they flatter themselves with the name _hottuk oretoopah_, “The beloved people,” because their supposed ancestors, as they affirm, were under the immediate government of the Deity, who was present with them, in a {32} very particular manner, and directed them by prophets; while the rest of the world were aliens and out-laws to the covenant.