The subject of the religion of the North American aborigines has been treated by Parkman in the introduction to the _Jesuits in North America_ (pp. lxvii.-lxxxix.), and he concludes that “the primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to an All-pervading grand Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians and sentimentalists.” To the same effect Palfrey, at the close of his vigorous discussion of the same subject (vol. i. p. 45), declares that the devout Indian of the “untutored mind is as fabulous as the griffin or the centaur.”
[245] Thomas May, better known as the historian and secretary of the Long Parliament, was born in 1595 and died in 1650. In 1627 he published a translation of Lucan’s _Pharsalia_, with a _supplementum_, or continuation (1630), by himself in seven books. This continuation he subsequently translated into Latin, and it is included in Lemaire’s edition of the _Pharsalia_ in his _Bibliotheca Classica Latina_ (Paris, 1832). The passage to which Morton refers is in the third book of the continuation (ll. 108-78). The following are some of the verses:--
“But in a higher kind (as some relate) Do Elephants with men communicate. (If you believe it) a religion They have, and monthly do adore the Moon, Besides the loftie Nabathæan wood, Of vast extent, Amylo’s gentle flood, Gliding along, the sandie mould combines. Thither, as oft as waxing Cynthia shines In her first borrowed light, from out the wood, Come all the Elephants, and in the floud Washing themselves (as if to purifie) They prostrate fall; and when religiously They have adored the Moon, return again Into the woods with joy.”
[246] In his Latin poem on New England, which the Rev. William Morell wrote during his eighteen months’ residence at Wessagusset as the spiritual head of the Robert Gorges settlement of 1623, there is a description of the Indian and his garments. The following is the author’s English rendering of his more elegant Latin original:--
“Whose hayre is cut with greeces, yet a locke Is left; the left side bound up in a knott: Their males small labour but great pleasure know, Who nimbly and expertly draw the bow; Traind up to suffer cruell heat and cold, Or what attempt so ere may make them bold; Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin Of deare or bever, with the hayre-side in; An otter skin their right armes doth keepe warme, To keepe them fit for use, and free from harme; A girdle set with formes of birds or beasts, Begirts their waste, which gentle gives them ease. Each one doth modestly bind up his shame, And deare-skin start-ups reach up to the same; A kind of _pinsen_ keeps their feet from cold, Which after travels they put off, up-fold, Themselves they warme, their ungirt limbes they rest In straw, and houses, like to sties.”