84 HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



he hath, and is weary, another succeeds and doth the like ; so 

 successively, one after another, night after night, resting and 

 sleeping in the days ; and so continue sometimes a week together. 

 And at such dancings, and feastings, and revelHngs, which are 

 used mostly after the ingathering of their harvests, all their 

 neighbors, kindred, and friends, meet together ; and much im- 

 piety is committed at such times. They use great vehemency 

 in the motion of their bodies, in their dances, and sometimes the 

 men dance in greater numbers in their war dances.* 



Thus were the habits of our New England predecessors 

 described by Daniel Gookin, the first Indian commissioner, 

 over two centuries ago. For how many generations of 

 Indians before the advent of white men this description 

 may be true, no one can tell. But for many hundreds of 

 years probably these habits prevailed because they were 

 about as simple as savage life can be, and there is no race 

 more unchangeable than the North American Indian. 

 What little religious life these men manifested was more 

 closely scrutinized by the Pilgrim fathers than by any 

 others, and Edward Winslow writes as follows : — 



At first, whereas myself and others wrote that the Indians 

 about us are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any 

 God : therein I erred, though we could then gather no better. For 

 as they conceive of many Divine Powers, so of one, whom they 

 call Kiehtan, (Ancient One) to be the principal and maker of all the 

 rest; and to be made by none. ''He" say they "created the 

 heavens, earth, sea, and all creatures contained therein." Also 

 that he made one man and one woman ; of whom they and 

 we, and all mankind came : but how they became so far dispersed, 

 that know they not. 



Kiehtan dwelleth above in the heavens ; whither all good men go 

 when they die, to see their friends and have their fill of all things, f 



In comprehending the nature of the aboriginal pos- 

 sessors of this locality, it must be remembered that they 



*Gookin's narrative in Mass. Hist. Col., Vol. I, p. 148/". 

 fGood News from New England, by Edward Winslow. 



