ACCOUNT OP THE INDIANS. 



349 



Generosity is among the Indian virtues. They 

 are more ready, in proportion to their means, to 

 assist a neighbour who may be in want, than the 

 inhabitants, generally, of civilized countries. An 

 Indian rarely kills an animal, without sending a 

 part of it to a neighbour, if he has one near 

 him. 



The private property of the Indians, con- 

 sists of horses, dogs, tents, guns and the uten- 

 sils that belong to their tents. Some of these 

 things, a little before their death, they bequeath 

 to some of their friends ; but all of their clothing, 

 guns, powder horns, &c. are buried with them. 

 Indeed, the Indians suffer nothing to remain in or 

 about the tent of a person who has died, which 

 he was accustomed to make use of while he was 

 alive. They consider it* a kind of sacrilege to 

 mention the name of a person after he is dead; 

 and they never speak of him as dead, but as mis- 

 erable, because, they say, he has taken a long 

 journey alone, to the country, to which his deceas- 

 ed relations had gone before him. 



Whenever any one is very sick, the whole of 

 his family, and frequently all of his relations, will 

 give some part of their clothing in sacrifice to the 

 devil or evil spirit, w T ho, they suppose, is the 

 cause of his illness. They, however, pray to the 

 ' Good Spirit, or Master of life, for his recovery, as 



