account is great, as the hazard
they ran in conferring these favours was little less than death. The men,
unrestrained by any laws or ties of conscience in the management of their
own families, exercise a most despotic authority over their wives, whom
they consider in the same view they do any other part of their property,
and dispose of them accordingly: Even their common treatment of them is
cruel; for though the toil and hazard of procuring food lies entirely upon
the women, yet they are not suffered to touch any part of it till the
husband is satisfied, and then he assigns them their portion, which is
generally very scanty, and such as he has not a stomach for himself. This
arbitrary proceeding, with respect to their own families, is not peculiar
to this people only. I have had occasion to observe it in more instances
than this I have mentioned, among many other nations of savages I have
since seen.

These Indians are of a middling stature, well set, and very active, and
make their way among the rocks with an amazing agility. Their feet, by this
kind of exercise, contract a callosity which renders the use of shoes quite
unnecessary to them. But before I conclude the few observations I have to
make on a people so confined in all their notions and practice, it may be
expected I should say something of their religion; but as their gross
ignorance is in nothing more conspicuous, and as we found it advisable to
keep out of their way when the fits of devotion came upon them, which is
rather frantic than religious, the reader can expect very little
satisfaction on this head. Accident has sometimes made me unavoidably a
spectator of scenes I should have chosen to have withdrawn myself from; and
so far I am instructed. As there are no fixed seasons for their religious
exercises, the younger people wait till the elders find themselves devoutly
disposed, who begin the ceremony by several deep and dismal groans, which
rise gradually to a hideous kind of singing, from which they proceed to
enthusiasm, and work themselves into a disposition that borders on madness;
for, suddenly jumping up, they snatch fire-brands from the fire, put them
in their mouths, and run about burning every body they come near; at other
times it is a custom with them to wound one another with sharp mussel-
shells till they are besmeared with blood. These orgies continue till these
who preside in them foam at the mouth, grow faint, are exhausted with
fatig