[The fear of death may be] deemed the most powerful motive for their religious worship, and the principal cause of the ascendancy gained by the above-mentioned teachers over their minds.

To heathen their system of morals seemed severe, for some of them made a total cessation from fornication, adultery, murder, and robbery, the most essential condition, when they promised their hearers a place among the good spirits and a share in their affluence and joy. They added, that they must be first thoroughly cleansed from their sins, and gave the poor people vomits, as the most expeditious mode of performing this purification.

Some Indians who believed in these absurdities vomited so often, that their lives were endangered by it. They were further strictly exhorted to fast, and to take nothing but physic for many days. Few indeed persevered in attending to so severe a regimen.

Other teachers pretended, that stripes were the most effectual means to purge away sin. They advised their hearers to suffer themselves to be beaten with twelve different sticks, from the soles of their feet to their necks, that their sins might pass from them through their throats.¹

¹Loskiel, G.H.n/an/an/an/a, , Part 1: 37.