Note 269 — APPENDIX

The great Deity of the savages of the river Bourbon, and the river St. Therese, Hudson’s Bay, is the sun. When they deliberate on any important affair, they make him, as it were, smoke. They assemble at day-break in a cabin of one of their chiefs, who, after having lighted his pipe, presents it three times to the rising sun; then he guides it with both hands from the east to the west, praying the sun to favour the nation. This being done, all the assembly smoke in the same pipe. Charlevoix, Hist. Journ. p. 108 (Ed. Lond.). The Sioux also practise the same rites.

Gookin, in 1674, says, “Some, for their God, adore the sun; others the moon; some the earth, others the fire, and like vanities. Yet, generally, they acknowledge one great supreme doer of good; and him they call Woonand or Mannitt; another, that is, the great doer of evil or mischief; and him they call Mattand, which is the Devil, &c.” Compare this relation with the invocation of Agamemnon, already quoted, from which it scarcely differs in any particular.

Traces of the adoration of the sun are discoverable also in Colden’s History of the Five Nations, not only among the Iroquois, but also with the neighbouring nations: thus among the attestations to a treaty of peace made with the Iroquois, by a band of the Utawas, we find the following. “Let the sun, as long as he shall endure, always shine upon us in friendship.” With which apostrophe was delivered a figure of the sun, sculptured of red marble.⁠[E] A similar figure was again presented to the Five Nations by the Utawas and a branch of the Hurons (called Dionondadies) jointly, in another treaty concluded between them.[F]

At a treaty in which general Harrison assisted, towards the commencement of the last war, the council-house being crowded, a chief arriving late was suffered to stand some time unheeded, until the general sent him a chair, as from his father. He refused the offer, saying, probably in allusion to their ancient belief, “The sun is my father, the earth my mother, and my seat is the ground.”

The sacred, or eternal, fire is also described in the following incidental remark, made by a chief speaker of the Five Nations: “Before the Christians arrived amongst us, the general council of the Five Nations was held at Onondago, where there has, from the beginning (or from the remotest time) been kept a fire continually burning, made of two great logs whose flame was never extinguished.”⁠[G]—Nuttall.