“How great, O moon! is thy goodness, in actually, for our benefit, supplying the place of the father of the day, as, next to him, thou hast concurred to make us spring out of that earth we have inhabited from the first ages of the world, and takest particular care of us, that the malignant air of the night, should not kill the principle and bud of life within us.  Thou regardest us, in truth, as thy children.  Thou hast not, from the first time, discontinued to treat us like a true mother.  Thou guidest us in our nocturnal journies.  By the favor of thy light it is, that we have often struck great strokes in war; and more than once have our enemies had cause to repent their being off their guard in thy clear winter-nights.  Thy pale rays have often sufficiently lighted us, for our marching in a body without mistaking our way; and have enabled us not only to discover the ambushes of the enemy, but often to surprize him asleep.  However we might be wanting to ourselves, thy regular course was never wanting to us.  Beautiful spouse of the sun! give us to discover the tracks of elks, moose-deer, martins, lynxes, and bears, when urged by our wants, we pursue by night the hunt after these beasts.  Give to our women the strength to support the pains of child-birth [Lucina fer opem, was also the cry amongst the ancient heathens], render their wombs prolific, and their breasts inexhaustible fountains.”

I have often tried to find out, whether there was any tradition or knowledge amongst them of the deluge, but always met with such unsatisfactory answers, as entirely discouraged my curiosity on that head.

This nation counts its years by the winters.  When they ask a man how old he is, they say, “How many winters have gone over thy head?”

Their months are lunar, and they calculate their time by them.  When we would say, “I shall be six weeks on my journey;” they express it by, “I shall be a moon and a half on it.”

Before we knew them, it was common to see amongst them, persons of both sexes of a hundred and forty, or a hundred and fifty years of age.  But these examples of longevity are grown much more rare.

By all accounts too, their populousness is greatly decreased.  Some imagine this is owing to that inveterate animosity, with which these so many petty nations were continually laboring one another’s destruction and extirpation.  Others impute it to the introduction by the Europeans, of the vice of drunkenness, and to the known effect of spirituous liquors in the excesses of their use, to which they are but too prone, in striking at the powers of generation, as well as at the principles of health and life.  Not improbably too, numbers impatient of the encroachments of the Europeans on their country, and dreading the consequences of them to their liberty, for which they have a passionate attachment, and incapable of reconciling or assimilating their customs and manners to ours, have chosen to withdraw further into the western recesses of the continent, at a distance impenetrable to our approach.