212 On tie defient of tfie American Indians from the Jews.
midable armies, in order to fecure the lives of the fubjecls, ard credit f the (late, we may fafely venture to affirm, from the long train of
- ircumftances already exhibited, that the Spanifh Peruvian ?*K Mexican
empires are without the leaft foundation in nature; and the." the Spaniards defeated the tribe of Mexico (properly called Mecbiko] &c, chiefly, bjr the help of their red allies.
In their defcriptions of South-America and its native inhabitants, they treat largely of heaven, hell, and purgatory , lions, falamanders, maids of honour, maids of penance, and their abbefies ; men whipping themfelves with cords ; idols, mattins, monaftic vows, cloiflers of young men, with a prodigious group of other popifh inventions: and. we muft not forget to- do juftice to thofe induftrious and fagacious obfervers,. who difcovered two golgothas, or towers made of human fkulls, plaiftered with lime. Acofta tells us, that Andrew de Topia aflured him, he and Gonfola de Vimbria reckoned one hundred and thirty-fix thoufand human fkulls in them. The temple dedicated to the air, is likewife worthy of being men tioned, as they aflert in the ftrongeft manner, that five thoufand priefts ferved conftantly in it, and obliged every one who entered, to bring fome human facrifice y that the walls of it were an inch thick, and the floor a. foot deep,, with black, dry, clotted blood. If connected herewith, we re flect, that befide this blood-thirfty god of the air, the Spaniards have repre- fented them as worfhipping a multitude of idol gods and goddefles, (no lefs than two thoufand according to Lopez de Gbmara) and facrificing to them chiefly human victims , and that the friars are reported by a Spanilh bifhop of Mexico, in his letters of the year 1532, to have broken down twenty thoufand idols, and defolated five hundred idol temples, where the natives facrificed every year more than twenty thoufand hearts of boys and girls ; and that if the noblemen were burnt to afoes, they killed their cooks, but lers, chaplains, and dwarfs * and had a plenty of targets, maces, and en- figns hurled into their funeral piles : this terrible (laughter, points out to us clearly from their own accounts, that thefe authors either gave the world a continued chain of falfehoods, or thofe facrifices, and human maflacres
- With regard to Indian dwarfs, I never heard of, or faw any in the northern nations,
but one in Ifhtatce, a northern town of the middle part of the Cheerake country ^ and he was a great beloved man..
they
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