Note 269 — NARRATIVE OF A YEAR'S RESIDENCE AMONG THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

For Rev. Samuel Parker see Townsend's Narrative, in our volume xxi, p. 335, note 112. Parker thus describes this incident in his Journal of an Exploring Tour beyond the Rocky Mountains (Ithaca, N. Y., 1838), pp. 275, 276: "One grave in the same village had a cross standing over it, which was the only relic of the kind I saw, together with this just named, during my travels in this country. But as I viewed the cross of wood made by men's hands of no avail, to benefit either the dead or the living, and far more likely to operate as a salvo to a guilty conscience, or a stepping-stone to idolatry, than to be understood in its spiritual sense to refer to a crucifixion of our sins, I took this, which the Indians had prepared, and broke it to pieces. I then told them we place a stone at the head and foot of the grave only to mark the place; and without a murmur they cheerfully acquiesced, and adopted our custom."—Ed.