“Their custom is,” according to Le Moyne, “to offer up the first-born son to the chief. When the day for the sacrifice is notified to the chief, he proceeds to a place set apart for the purpose, where there is a bench for him on which he takes his seat. In the middle of the area before him is a wooden stump two feet high and as many thick, before which a mother sits on her heels, her face covered in her hands, lamenting the loss of her child. The principal one of her female relatives or friends now offers the child to the chief in worship, after which the women who have accompanied the mother form a circle and dance around with demonstrations of joy, but without joining hands. She who holds the child goes and dances in the middle, singing some praises to the chief. Meanwhile, six Indians, chosen for the purpose, take their stand in a certain place in the open area; and midway among them the sacrificing officer, who is decorated with a sort of magnificence, and holds a club. The ceremony being through, the sacrificer takes the child and slays it in honour of the chief, before them all, upon the wooden stump. This offering was, on one occasion, performed in our presence.”[206] “It was the Custom in Peru, to sacrifice Children from four to ten Years of Age, which was chiefly done when the Inga was sick, or going to War, to pray for Victory, and at the Coronation of those Princes they sacrific’d two hundred Children. Sometimes they strangl’d, and bury’d them, and other times they cut their Throats, and the Priests besmear’d themselves with the Blood from Ear to Ear, which was the Formality of the Sacrifice. Nor were the Virgins (_Mamaconas_) of the Temple exempt from being sacrific’d and, when any Person of Note was sick, and the Priest said he must die, they sacrific’d his son, desiring the Idol to be satisfied with him, and not take away his Father’s life. The Ceremonies us’d at this Sacrifice were strange, for they behav’d themselves like mad Men. They believ’d that all Calamities were occasion’d by Sin, and that Sacrifices were the Remedy.”[207] Further evidence of the attitude of the Indians is given by the first secretary of the Colony of Virginia Brittania, who asserted that the Indians in Florida sacrificed the first-born male child. According to this writer, their Quiyoughquisocks, or prophets to the Indians, persuaded the warriors to resist the settlements of the white people because their Okeus, who was god of the tribe, would not be appeased by the sacrifice of a thousand children if they permitted the white people, who despised their religion, to dwell among them.[208]