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sitting on the ground, and the two Powahs before the fire, jumping and smiting their breasts, and rolling their eyes very frightfully.
‘But what came of it?’
asked Rebecca.
‘Did the Evil Spirit whom they thus called upon testify against himself, by telling who were his instruments in mischief?’
The girl said she had never heard of any discovery of the poisoners, if indeed there were such.
She told us, moreover, that many of the best people in the tribe would have no part in the business, counting it sinful; and that the chief actors were much censured by the ministers, and so ashamed of it that they drove the Powahs out of the village, the women and boys chasing them and beating them with sticks and frozen snow, so that they had to take to the woods in a sorry plight.
We gave the girl some small trinkets, and a fair piece of cloth for an apron, whereat she was greatly pleased.
We were all charmed with her good parts, sweetness of countenance, and discourse and ready wit, being satisfied thereby that Nature knoweth no difference between Europe and America in blood, birth, and bodies, as we read in Acts 17 that God hath made of one blood all mankind.
I was specially minded of a saying of that ingenious but schismatic man, Mr. Roger Williams, in the little book which he put forth in England on the Indian tongue:— Boast not, proud English, of thy birth and blood,
Thy brother Indian is by birth as good;
Of one blood God made him and thee and all,
As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.
Thy brother Indian is by birth as good;
Of one blood God made him and thee and all,
As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.
