“In times of general Mortality they omit the Ceremonies of burying, exposing their dead Carkases to the Beasts of prey. But at other times they dig a Pit and set the diseased therein upon his breech upright, and, throwing in the earth, cover it with the sods and bind them down with sticks, driving in two stakes at each end; their mournings are somewhat like the howlings of the Irish, seldom at the grave but in the Wigwam where the party dyed, blaming the Devil for his hard-heartedness, and concluding with rude prayers to him to afflict them no further.” (Josselyn, _Two Voyages_, p. 132.) There is a highly characteristic passage to the same effect in Wood’s _Prospect_, p. 79.
[281] The reference is to Wood’s _New England’s Prospect_, p. 13; where, also, the Indian custom of firing the country in November is described.
[282] Gookin says: “This beastly sin of drunkenness could not be charged upon the Indians before the English and other Christian nations, as Dutch, French, and Spaniards, came to dwell in America: which nations, especially the English in New-England, have cause to be greatly humbled before God, that they have been, and are, instrumental to cause these Indians to commit this great evil and beastly sin of drunkenness.” (I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 151.)
In regard to the peculiarities of Indian drunkenness, see Dodge’s _Wild Indians_, pp. 333-5. What is there said of the Indians of “the plains” is probably true of all the northern American Indians. “This passion for intoxication amounts almost to an insanity.... To drink liquor as a beverage, for the gratification of taste, or for the sake of pleasurable conviviality, is something of which the Indian can form no conception. His idea of pleasure in the use of strong drink is to get drunk, and the quicker and more complete that effect, the better he likes it.”
[283] “They live in a country where _we_ now have all the conveniences of human life: but as for _them_, their _housing_ is nothing but a few _mats_ tyed about _poles_ fastened in the earth, where a good _fire_ is their _bed-clothes_ in the coldest seasons; their _clothing_ is but a skin of a beast, covering their _hind-parts_, their _fore-parts_ having but a little apron, where nature calls for secrecy; their _diet_ has not a greater dainty than their _Nokehick_, that is a spoonful of their _parched meal_, with a spoonful of _water_, which will strengthen them to travel a day to-gether; except we should mention the flesh of _deers_, _bears_, _mose_, _rackoons_, and the like, which they have when they can _catch_ them; as also a little _fish_, which, if they would preserve, it was by _drying_, not by _salting_; for they had not a grain of _salt_ in the world, I think, till we bestowed it on them.” _Magnalia_, B. III. part iii. In his _Letters and Notes on the North American Indians_ (_Letter No. 17_) Catlin comments on the failure of the Indians to make any use of salt, even in localities where it abounds. See _supra_, 161.