OF LANCASTER COUNTY. 15 



knowledgecl by themselves to be manifestly pernicious, particularly from 

 abusing themselves with strong liquor, by law, as well as advice, &c., so 

 much as might reasonably have been wished, or expected; yet these 

 very labours and means were far from being useless, or entirely without 

 good effect; for the consequence declared that the Indians, in general, 

 were sensible of the kind regard paid them, and of the good intended 

 thereby; which they shewed and proved by their future conduct, and 

 steady friendship; as appears in the preceding history,^ though they gen- 

 erally refused in a formal manner to embrace Euroi^ean manners, religion 

 and opinions : ' For, governed by their own customs, and not by laws, 

 creeds, &c., theygreatly revered those of their ancestors, and followed them 

 so implicitly, that a new thought, or action, seldom took place among 

 them.' 



"They are tliought (says William Penu) to have believed in a God and 

 immortality; and seemed to aim at a public worship: in performing this, 

 they sometimes sat in several circles, one within another: the action 

 consisted of singing, jumping, shouting and dancing ; which they are said 

 to have used mostly as a tradition from their ancestors, rather than from 

 any knowledge or enquiry of their own into the serious parts of its 

 origin. 



'' They said the great King, who made them, dwelt in a glorious country 

 lo the southward; and that the spirits of the best should go thither and 

 live again. Their most solemn worship was a sacrifice of ihQ first fmiU, 

 in which they burned the first and fattest buck, and feasted together 

 upon what else they had collected. In this sacrifice they broke no bonc^ 

 of any creature which they ate ; but after they had done they gathered 

 them together and burned them very carefully. They distinguished 

 between a good and evil Manetta, or Spirit; worshipping the former for 

 the good they hoped; and, it is said, some of them, the latter, that they 

 might not be afflicted with the evil which they feared; so slavishly dark 

 are some of them represented to have been in their understandings ! But 

 whether this last be true, in a general sense, or peculiar only to some 

 j)arts, it was certainly not the case at all among the Indians within the 

 limits of these provinces, or, at least, very much conc^ealed from the first 

 and early settlers of them. 



" But in late years it is less to be admired that the Imlians, in these 

 provinces and their vicinity, have shown so little regard to the Chris- 

 tian religion, but rather treated it, as well as its professors, with con- 

 tempt and abhorrence, when it is duly considered what kind of Christians 

 those generally are, with whom they mostly deal and converse; as, the 

 Indian traders, and most of the inhabitants of the back counties of this 

 and the neighboring provinces, Avho have chiefly represented the profcvs- 



1 S. Smith. 



