Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott].

  • Walter Scott
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    80/344 (page 78)
    which they discovered and conquered, that the Indians, in their idol-worship, were favoured by the demons with a direct intercourse, and that their priests inculcated doctrines and rites the foulest and most abhorrent to Christian ears. The great Snake- god of Mexico and other idols, worshipped with hu- man sacrifices, and bathed in the gore of their pri- soners, gave but too much probability to this accu- sation ; and if the images themselves were not ac- tually tenanted by evil spirits, the worship which the Mexicans paid to them was founded upon such deadly cruelty and dark superstition, as might easily be be- lieved to have been breathed into mortals by the agency of hell. Even in North America, the first settlers in New- England, and other parts of that immense continent, uniformly agreed that they detected, among the inha- bitants, traces of an intimate connexion with Satan. It is scarce necessary to remark, that this opinion was founded exclusively upon the tricks practised by the native powa’ns, or cunning men, to raise themselves to influence among the chiefs, and to obtain esteem with the people, which, possessed as they were pro- fessionally of some skill in jugglery, and the know- ledge of some medical herbs and secrets, the under- standing of the colonists was unable to trace to their real source—legerdemain and imposture. By the account, however, of the Reverend Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, book vi.,* he does not ascribe to these Indian conjurers any skill greatly superior to a maker of almanacs, or common fortune-teller. “ They,” says the Doctor, “ universally acknowledged and worshipped many gods, and therefore highly esteemed and reverenced their priests, powahs, or wizards, who were esteemed as having immediate converse with the gods. To them, therefore, they addressed themselves in all difficult cases; yet could ♦ On Remarkable Mercies of Divine Providence