The writer will not determine with any degree of positiveness on the fact, that these aborigines of our country are, past all doubt, the descendants of Jacob, as he wishes to leave every man to draw the conclusion from the facts themselves. But he thinks he may without impeachment of his integrity or prudence, or any charge of over credulity, say, that were a people to be found, with demonstrative evidence that their descent was from Jacob, it could hardly be expected, at this time, that their languages, manners, customs and habits, with their religious rites, should discover greater similarity to those of the ancient Jews and of their divine law, without supernatural revelation, or some miraculous interposition, than the present nations of American Indians have done, and still do, to every industrious and intelligent enquirer.

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Is there no weight of evidence, in finding peculiar customs among the Indians, of the same import as those enjoined on the ancient people of God, and held sacred by both? Or in each people having three sacred feasts, religiously attended every year, with peculiar and similar rites and dress, to which the males only should be admitted, and these held at certain periods and at one special place of worship in a nation, and conforming, with astonishing precision, to each other, while the women were wholly excluded by both people, and particularly that connected with one of them, each people should have another of a very singular and extraordinary nature in the evening, being in part a sacrifice, in which not a bone of the animal, provided for the occasion, should be broken, nor a certain part of the thigh eaten — that if a family were not sufficient to eat the whole, a neighbour might be called in to partake with them and if any should be still left it must religiously be burned in the fire before the rising of the next sun. That their houses and temple, at one of these feasts, were to be swept with the greatest care, and searched in every part, with religious scrupulosity, that no unhallowed thing should remain unconsumed by fire. And that the altars for the sacrifices were to be built of unhewn stone, or on stones on which a tool had not been suffered to come. That the entrails and fat of the sacrifice, were to be burned on the altar, and the body of the animal only to be eaten? When all these are com pared with the Hebrew divine law, given by God himself from heaven, we find every article rigidly commanded and enforced by sovereign authority.