{276} The great ritual of this religion, which obtained throughout America, is the pipe which was filled with the inebriating tobacco, and smoked in offering to this great luminary, and to the four quarters, or the surrounding horizon of the visible world, which it illuminates. Associated with this adoration, as simple as natural, was that of preserving an eternal fire in some sacred place appropriated to this purpose, as well as for the celebration of their festivals and deliberative councils. The pipe was brought forward on every solemn occasion, and to ratify every serious pledge of peace, integrity, and friendship. The rites of hospitality, sanctioned by this ceremony, were irrefragable, as well as every commercial and political contract. The Hurons say, that the Indian nations derived the sacred pipe from the great luminary to whom it is dedicated, and, that it was first presented to the western nation of the Pawnees,[272] a tradition which I have found corroborated by the nation of the Mandans and the Minitarees. Those people, as well as the Naudowessies, influenced by an idolatrous regard for the sun, make offerings of their most valuable effects,[273] and, occasionally, even of the lives of their prisoners. The Mexicans immolated hosts of human victims to their cruel and imaginary deities.
If the Natchez refrained from cruel offerings to their {277} gods, they failed not to sacrifice many human victims at the death of their caziques, who pretended to derive their origin from the sun.
- [Footnote: combat, as if to designate the Cain and Abel of the Hebrews, and which were
considered in Mexico as the children of the female deess. Humboldt, vol. I. pp. 235, 236.—Nuttall.]
