These People have a notion that _confession_ saves them from many accidents & also preserves the lives of the Sick, or rather restores them to their wonted health &c. I have not learned the origin of this; when, why, or wherefore, but it seems to be very remote, to have sprang with their mythology. I shall it make a point to enquire very particularly into this; & for this, as well as other things, at different quarters, to find & detect _errors_ &c. but all, however, that I have written in these pages, tho' there may be some difference in the recital & perhaps a _few_ stragling circumstances, are, I have great reason to think fundamentally the same throughout among these people....... When any one of them is particularly affected with diseases out of the common course of nature _here_, or, tho' the disease may be precisely the same as all others, yet from certain circumstan- ces, individually, or a combination of them, they say he is Oh-gee-nay in Cree, or On-gee-nay in Sauteux (the On- pronounced as in french & _not_ English), by which it would seem as if they meant he was afflicted or chastised for his own sins, or those of some of his or her, near relatives, i.e. father, mother &c. if children: if grown up & married persons, for their own. Whether they only imagine this, or are informed of it by conjuring, _private_ infor- (52) information from their _Familiars_, or from the Symptoms of the Sick person &c. &c. I cannot say, but the thus afflicted person must confess his Sins publickly. Now in these confessions as in all their other discourses or conversations (_initiating_ & _giving of medicines_, excepted) they use no circumlocution, no secret or enigmatical word or term, to screen themselves; but all is de- livered in plain terms & before every one that chuses to hear: These confessions are ter- rible things; & they seem far more sincere & complete than those of many catholics. --They have wonderful retentive memories, & no scene, no crime from their earliest years unto that day do they hide. But Great God! what abominations!--one would scarcely imagine the human mind capable of inventing such infamously dia- bolical actions as _some_ do commit: murder, incest, & other things if possible an hundred fold more debasing the human Soul. Whether they repent of these things neither can I say, but it would appear as if they were the acts of a contrite & most humbly penitant Soul. I have never had an opportunity of hearing these from _their own_ mouths, but _other_ indians have told me of them, & tho' before their families _sometimes_, have never omitted one single circumstance from the suggestions of the idea down to the very last _conclusion_. When I heard of these things at first, I _would not_ beleive them; but hearing them come so circumstantially _I trembled for the Land I sojourned in_ "lest it should vomit me out as the land of Canaan did its inhabitants" "or be swallowed up in