Note 15 — Observations, and arguments, in proof of the American Indians being descended from the Jews.

Bartram, Travels, p. 495, says “These Indians are by no means idolaters, unless their puffing tobacco smoke towards the sun, and rejoicing at the appearance of the new moon may be so termed. So far from idolatry are they that they have no images amongst them, nor any religious rite or ceremony that I could perceive; but adore the Great Spirit, the giver and taker away of the breath of life, with the most profound and respectful homage.” Timberlake’s observations as to their belief in a Great Spirit and future rewards and punishment: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 87; see also, Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country, 80. DeBrahm, who was at Fort Loudoun among the Cherokees, (1756) says that the “Indians have a scant knowledge of a Divine Being which extends no farther than that they believe he is good; the Cherokees call him Hianequo, the great man, whom the Catawbas call Rivet, the overseer; but they pay no adoration to him, nor anything existing.” Plowden, Documents Connected with the History of South Carolina, 221. The same testimony as to their belief in a Supreme Being is borne by Wm. Byrd II in his History of the Dividing Line. Of the Chickasaws, Rev. John Wesley wrote from Georgia in 1736: “They have so firm a reliance on Providence and so settled a habit of looking up to a Superior Being in all occurrences of life, etc.” Ga. Col. Rec., XXI, 220. But see as to adoration of the sun by the Natchez: Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley, 381, 168 et seq., and his Early History of the Creeks, 381; Hodge, Handbook, II, 365. The theory has been held that the Southern Indians were advanced beyond some others because of the teaching of the Spanish missionaries among the Gulf and South Atlantic Indians at a very early period, such as Cabeca de Vaca (1528) who wrote: “We told them by signs, which they understood, there was One whom we called God, who created the heaven and the earth.”