AMERICANS. 87 
old men, or make prisoners of as many as they can manage, or have 
strength enough to be useful to their nation. 
But when the enemy is apprised of their design, and coming on in 
arms against them, they throw themselves flat on the ground among 
the withered herbs and leaves, which their faces are painted to re- 
semble. Then they allow a part to pass unmolested, when, all at once 
with a tremendous shout rising from their ambush, they pour a storm 
of musket-bullets on their foes. The party attacked returns the same 
cry. Every one shelters himself with a tree, and returns the fire of 
the adverse party, as soon as they can raise themselves from the 
ground to give a second fire. Thus does the battle continue until 
the one party is so much weakened as to be incapable of further 
resistance. But if the force on each side continues nearly equal, the 
fierce spirits of the savages, inflamed by the loss of their friends, can 
be no longer restrained. They abandon their distant war, to rush 
upon one another with clubs and hatchets in their hands, magnifying 
their own courage, and insulting their enemies with the bitterest 
reproaches. A cruel combat ensues ; death appears in a thousand 
hideous forms, which would congeal the blood of civilized nations to 
behold, but which rouse the fury of savages. They trample, they 
they insult over the dead bodies, tearing the scalp from the head, 
wallowing in their blood like wild beasts, and sometimes devouring 
their flesh. The flame rages on till it meets with no resistance ; 
then the prisoners are secured, those unhappy men whose fate is a 
thousand times more dreadful than those who die in the held. The 
conquerors set up a hideous howling, to lament the friends they have 
lost. They approach in a melancholy and severe gloom to their own 
villages ; a messenger is sent to anounce their arrival, and the women 
with frightful shrieks come out to mourn their dead brothers or their 
husbands ; when they arrive, the chief relates in a low voice to the 
elders, a circumstantial account of every particular of the expedition. 
The orator proclaims aloud this account to the people ; and as he 
mentions the names of those who have fallen, the shrieks of the wo- 
men are redoubled. The men too join in these cries, according as 
each is most connected with the deceased by blood or friendship. 
The last ceremony is the proclamation of the victory ; each individual 
then forgets his private misfortunes, and joins in the triumph of his 
nation ; all tears are wiped from their eyes, and, by an unaccount- 
able transition, they pass in a moment from the bitterest sorrow 
to an extravagance of joy. But the treatment of the prisoners, whose 
fate all this time remains undecided, is what chiefly characterizes the 
savages, and which has been already described* 
Probable 3Ianner of first peopling America, 
Those who call in question the authority of the sacred writings, says Mr. 
Mori§e, pretend that the Americans are not descendants of Adam, that 
he was the father of the Asiatics only, and that God created other men 
to be patriarchs of the Europeans, Africans, and Americans. But 
this is contrary to the traditions of the Americans themselves, who, 
in their paintings and hymns, call themselves “ the descendants of 
those who escaped from the general deluge.” In answer to the ques- 
