The Rev. David Brainerd, a devout and pious missionary, visited the island in 1745, in the spring while going up the river, and in the fall while returning. His object was to convert the Indians, which he found quite as hopeless a task as did Heckwelder and Loskiel, who preceded him with the same object in view. During his peregrinations Brainerd kept a journal, which, together with his life, was published by the American Tract Society. From this journal we extract the following, in order to give his views of savage life, as well as an interesting account of what he saw and heard at the island:-- Sept. 20.--Visited the Indians again at Juneauta Island, and found them almost universally very busy in making preparations for a great sacrifice and dance. Had no opportunity to get them together in order to discourse with them about Christianity, by reason of their being so much engaged about their sacrifice. My spirits were much sunk with a prospect so very discouraging, and specially seeing I had this day no interpreter but a pagan, who was as much attached to idolatry as any of them, and who could neither speak nor understand the language of these Indians; so that I was under the greatest disadvantages imaginable. However, I attempted to discourse privately with some of them, but without any appearance of success; notwithstanding, I still tarried with them. The valuable interpreter was probably a Delaware Indian, who was a visitor to take part in the dance and sacrifice, while the inhabitants of the island were Shawnees, who originally came from the south, and their languages were entirely dissimilar. Brainerd calls them "pagans" and "idolaters." This is a charge the Indians used to combat most vehemently. They most unquestionably had small images carved out of wood to represent the Deity; yet they repudiated the idea of worshipping the wood, or the wooden image, merely using it as a symbol through which to worship the Unseen Spirit. If such was the fact, they could not well be called pagans in the common acceptation of the term. The journal goes on to say:-- In the evening they met together, nearly one hundred of them, and danced around a large fire, having prepared ten fat deer for the sacrifice. The fat of the inwards they burnt in the fire while they were dancing, which sometimes raised the flame to a prodigious height, at the same time yelling and shouting in such a manner that they might easily have been heard two miles or more. They continued their sacred dance nearly all night; after which they ate the flesh of the sacrifice, and so retired each one to his own lodging.