The Book of Religions: Comprising the Views, Creeds, Sentiments, or Opinions, of All the Principal Religious Sects in the World, Particularly of All Christian Denominations in Europe and America, to Which are Added Church and Missionary Statistics, Together With Biographical SketchesHayward, John
Religion
The Book of Religions: Comprising the Views, Creeds, Sentiments, or Opinions, of All the Principal Religious Sects in the World, Particularly of All Christian Denominations in Europe and America, to Which are Added Church and Missionary Statistics, Together With Biographical Sketches
Hayward, John
Christian biography; Religions; Sects
The natives of NEW ENGLAND believed not only a plurality of gods, who made
and governed the several nations of the world, but they made deities of
every thing they imagined to be great, powerful, beneficial, or hurtful to
mankind. Yet they conceived an Almighty Being, who dwells in the
south-west regions of the heavens, to be superior to all the rest. This
Almighty Being they called Kichtan, who at first, according to their
tradition, made a man and woman out of a stone, but, upon some dislike,
destroyed them again; and then made another couple out of a tree, from
whom descended all the nations of the earth; but how they came to be
scattered and dispersed into countries so remote from one another, they
cannot tell. They believed their Supreme God to be a good being, and paid
a sort of acknowledgment to him for plenty, victory, and other benefits.
But there is another power, which they called _Hobamocko_, (the devil,) of
whom they stood in greater awe, and worshipped merely from a principle of
fear.
The immortality of the soul was universally believed among them. When good
men die, they said, their souls go to Kichtan, where they meet their
friends, and enjoy all manner of pleasures; when wicked men die, they go
to Kichtan also, but are commanded to walk away, and wander about in
restless discontent and darkness forever.
After the coming of the white people, the Indians in NEW JERSEY, who once
held a plurality of deities, supposed there were only three, because they
saw people of three kinds of complexion, viz., English, negroes, and
themselves.
It was a notion generally prevailing among them, that the same God who
made them did not make us, but that they were created after the white
people; and it is probable they supposed their God gained some special
skill by seeing the white people made, and so made them better; for it is
certain they considered themselves and their methods of living, which they
said their God expressly prescribed for them, vastly preferable to the
white people and their methods.
With regard to a future state of existence, many of them imagined that the
Chichung, i. e., the shadow, or what survives the body, will, at death, go
southward, to some unknown, but curious place,—will enjoy some kind of
happiness, such as hunting, feasting, dancing, or the like; and what they
suppose will contribute much to their happiness in the next state, is,
that they shall never be weary of these entertainments.
Those who have any notion about rewards and sufferings in a future state,
seem to imagine that most will be happy, and that in the delightful
fields, chasing the game, or reposing themselves with their families; but
the poor, frozen sinners cannot stir one step towards that sunny region.
Nevertheless, their misery has an end; it is longer or shorter, according
to the degree of their guilt; and, after its expiation, they are permitted
to become inhabitants of the Indian paradise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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