George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[301] and to chant aves. Gathering round Eliot, in

Chap XXII.}

Massachusetts, the tawny choir sang the psalms of David, in Indian, ‘to one of the ordinary English

Wilson.

tunes, melodiously;’ and in the school of Brainerd, thirty Lennape boys could answer to all the questions

Jonathan Ed wards, III 539

in the Westminster Assembly's Catechism. There were instances of the submission of warriors to the penance imposed by the Roman church; and the sanctity of a Mohawk maiden,—the American Geneveva,— who preserved her vows of chastity, is celebrated in the early histories of New France. They recognized the connection between the principles of Christian

Bra???nerd. Charlevoix

morals; there were examples among them of men who, under the guidance of missionaries, became anxious for their salvation, having faith enough for despair,

Charle voix, i. 189

if not for conversion; and even in the doctrine of the divine unity, they seemed to find not so much a novel-

Shepard

ty as the revival of a slumbering reminiscence. They were not good arithmeticians; their tales of the number of their years, or of the warriors in their clans, are little to be relied on; and yet every where they counted like Leibnitz and La Place, and, from the influence of some law that pervades humanity, they began to repeat at ten. They could not dance like those trained to attitudes of grace; they could not sketch light ornaments like Raphael; yet, under every sky, they delighted in a rhythmic repetition of forms and sounds,— would move in cadence to wild melodies,—and, with great elegance and imitative power, they would tattoo their skins with harmonious arabesques. We call them cruel; yet they never invented the thumb-screw, or the boot, or the rack, or broke on the wheel, or exiled bands of their nations for opinion's sake; and never protected the monopoly of a medicine man by the gallows,