The office and duty of the powah is to be exercised principally in calling upon the devil, and curing diseases of the sick or wounded. The common people join with him in the exercise of invocation, but do but only assent, or as we term it, say Amen to that he saith; yet sometime break out into a short musical note with him. The powah is eager and free in speech, fierce in countenance, and joineth many antic and laborious gestures with the same, over the party diseased. If the party be wounded, he will also seem to suck the wound; but if they be curable (as they say) he toucheth it not, but askooke, that is, the snake, or wobsacuck, that is, the eagle, sitteth on his shoulder, and licks the same. This none see but the powah, who tells them he doth it himself. If the party be otherwise diseased, it is accounted sufficient if in any shape he but come into the house, taking it for an undoubted sign of recovery.

And as in former ages Apollo had his temple at Delphos, and Diana at Ephesus, so have I heard them call upon some as if they had their residence in some certain places, or because they appeared in those forms in the same. In the powah’s speech, he promiseth to sacrifice many skins of beasts, kettles, hatchets, beads, knives, and other the best things they have to the fiend, if he will come to help the party diseased; but whether they perform it, I know not. The other practices I have seen, being necessarily called sometimes to be with their sick, and have used the best arguments I could to make them understand against the same. They have told me I should see the devil at those times come to the party; but I assured myself and them of the contrary, which so proved; yea, themselves have confessed they never saw him when any of us were present. In desperate and extraordinary hard travail in childbirth, when the party cannot be delivered by the ordinary means, they send for this powah; though ordinarily their travail is not so extreme as in our parts of the world, they being of a more hardy nature; for on the third day after child- birth, I have seen the mother with the infant, upon a small occasion, in cold weather, in a boat upon the sea.

Many sacrifices the Indians use, and in some cases kill children. It seemeth they are various in their religious worship in a little distance, and grow more and more cold in their worship to Kiehtan; saying, in their memory he was much more called upon. The Nanohiggansets exceed in their blind devotion, and have a great spacious house, wherein only some few (that are, as we may term them, priests) come. Thither, at certain known times, resort all their people, and offer almost all the riches they have to their gods, as kettles, skins, hatchets, beads. knives, etc., all which are cast by the priests into a great fire that they make in the midst of the house, and there consumed to ashes. To this offering every man bringeth freely; and the more he is known to bring, hath the better esteem of all men. This the other Indians about us approve of as good, and wish their sachims would appoint the like; and because the plague hath not reigned at Nanohigganset as at other places about them, they attribute to this custom there used.

The pnieses are men of great courage and wisdom, and to those also the devil appeareth more familiarly than to others, and as we conceive, maketh covenant with them to preserve them from death by wounds with arrows, knives, hatchets, etc., or at least both themselves and especially the people think themselves to be freed from the same. And though, against their battles, all of them by painting disfigure themselves, yet they are known by their courage and boldness, by reason whereof one of them will chase almost an hundred men; for they account it death for whomsoever stand in their way. These are highly esteemed of all sorts of people, and are of the sachim’s council, without whom they will not war, or undertake any weighty business. In war their sachims, for their more safety, go in the midst of them. They are commonly men of the greatest stature and strength, and such as will endure most hardness, and yet are more discreet, courteous and humane in their carriages than any amongst them, scorning theft, lying, and the like base dealings, and stand as much upon their reputation as any men. And to the end they may have store of these, they train up the most forward and likeliest boys, from their childhood, in great hardness, and make them abstain from dainty meat, observing divers orders prescribed, to the end that when they are of age, the devil may appear to them; causing to drink the juice of sentry⁵

“The greater centaury is that famous herb wherewith Chiron the centaur (as the report goeth) was cured at what time as having entertained Hercules in his cabin, he would needs be handling and tampering with the weapons of his said guest so long until one of the arrows light upon his foot and wounded him