2 CONVERSATION WITH THE KING [1820. 
parent attention. There were present the King^, 
the chief captain, and Mooshene, captain of an- 
other Tammaha town, ten or twelve miles distant. 
After the meeting was over, the king and chief 
men returned, and we entered into conversation 
with them. On being requested to tell what 
they knew of God ? The King replied, that they 
knew nothing of God, but when they saw wag" 
gons, and the things in them, and the tent, &c. 
they thought that the men who could make such 
things must be a kind of gods, but now that we 
had told them otherwise, they knew we were men 
like themselves ; he then added, that they knew 
not what to think of God. The King (who is an 
old man) said, that old men in former times used 
to speak of those things, but men now speak of 
nothing ; that he knew he was ignorant, and had 
come to the tent to be instructed. On being 
asked if he knew that he had a soul, he said he 
did not, nor did he know any difference between 
men and beasts ; but that they had always known 
there was a God, and that he was near them, and 
killed them ; but they never knew why he was 
angry. When they did what was bad, I asked if 
their hearts told them it was evil which they had 
done ;-— such as when they murdered or stole ? 
The king answered " When a man does evil he 
does not think of it, but if a man tells him, and 
reproves him for it, then he thinks of it and is 
afraid." " When they thought God killed them," 
