SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 749 



of their beliefs in general. It was obtained from Jopassus, brother 

 oi the great chief of the Potomac tribe : 



We have (said he) five gods in all; our chief god appeares often unto us 

 in the likenes of a mighty great hare; the other four have noe visible shape, 

 but are indeed the four wynds which keepe the four corners of the earth 

 (and then, with his hand, he seemed to quarter out the scytuations of the 

 world). Our god, who takes upon him this shape of a hare, conceaved with 

 himself how to people this great world, and with what kinde of creatures, 

 and yt is true (said he) that at length he devised and made divers men and 

 women, and made provision for them, to be kept up yet a while in a great 

 bag. Nowe there were certayne spiritts, which he described to be like great 

 giants, which came to the hare's dwelling place (being towards the rising of 

 the sun), and had perseveraunce of the men and women which he had put 

 into that great bagg, and they would have had them to eat, but the godlye 

 hare reproved those canniball spiritts, and drove them awaye. . . . The ol<l 

 man went on, and said how that godlike hare made the water, and the fish 

 Therein, and the land, and a great deare, which should feed upon the land ; 

 at which assembled the other four gods, envyous hereat, from the east, the 

 west, from the north and south, and with hunting pooles kild this great deare, 

 dreast him, and, after they had feasted with him, departed againe, east, west, 

 north, and south ; at which the other god, in despight for this their mallice 

 to him, tooke all the haires of the slaine deare, and spred them upon the 

 earth, with many powerfull words and charmes, whereby every haire became 

 a deare; and then he opened the great bag, wherein the men and the women 

 were, and placed them upon the earth, a man and a woman in one country, 

 and a man and a woman in another country, and so the world tooke his first 

 begynning of mankind. The captaine bad the boy ask him what he thought 

 became of them after their death, to which he answered somewhat like as is 

 expressed before of the inhabitaunts about us, how that after they are dead 

 here, they goe up to a top of a high tree, and there they espie a faire plaine 

 broad path waye, on both sides whereof doth grow all manner of pleasant 

 fruicts, as mulberies, straberries, plombes, etc. In this pleasant path they 

 rune toward the rising of the sun, where the godly hare's howse is, and in the 

 midway they come to a house where a woman goddesse doth dwell, whoe hath 

 alwaies her doares open for hospitality, and hath at all tymes ready drest greene 

 vskatahomen and pokahichory, (which is greene corne brused and boyled, and 

 walnutts beaten small, then washed from the shells with a quantity of water, 

 which makes a kind of milke, and which they esteeme an extraordinary dish,) 

 togither with all manner of pleasant fruicts, in a readiness to entertayne all such 

 as doe travell to the great hare's howse ; and when they are well refreshed, they 

 run in this pleasant path to the rising of the sun, where they fynd their fore- 

 fathers lyvlng in great pleasure, in a goodly field, where they doe nothing but 

 dawnce and sing, and feed on delitious fruicts with that great hare, who is their 

 great god; and when they have lyved there untill they be starke old men, they 

 saie they dye there likewise by turnes, and come into the world againe. 

 ( Strachey, 1849, pp. 98-100 ; see p. 746 above) . 



Our knowledge of the religion of the Virginia Siouans, as distin- 

 guished from that of the Carolinian tribes of this stock, is nearly 

 confined to the information which William Byrd extracted from his 

 guide Bearskin, a Saponi, who, says Byrd, explained his views "with- 

 out any of that Reserve to which his Nation is Subject." 



