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37 39 This to you, Sir, I had a desire to obtain more full and satisfactory information. Second, another remark I would make, is the following By being handed down through successive generations, their traditions have become burthened with much rubbish. When this seems to affect the traditions, so as to render them apparently fabulous, I either say nothing about those traditions, or comment with them the rubbish by which they are materially affected. But the traditions, communicated in my last letter, are not, as I can perceive, injured at all, in this manner. The character and circumstances of the old men who related them to me, -- other traditions and customs, connected with these, especially some not mentioned in the Bible, and which can be discovered only by a careful examination of the ancient history of the Jews, and their entire ignorance of these antiquarians respecting every other part of the Bible, prove to my mind that their traditions above refered to have been handed down from present to children, entirely independent of any information derived from white men on this continent. Though, when they started to go to the land promised their fathers, they were fleeing from their enemies, yet not one can tell who those enemies were, nor where they they lived, though their leader ascended the mountain, received the land &c. yet no one can tell the name of that leader. Though their greatest prophet, who appointed their priests, religious festivals was by the name of Moses (Cherokee Wa si) yet no one now knows this man to be the same as their leader through the wilderness. The Indians state the reason why the land was marked, and handed down verbally, had been forgotten, this though very probably correct, could not have been from from the Bible. The Indians affirm that God (or rather the Son of God) when He gave the law on a mountain, commanded them to sing, or repeat certain prayers, early in the morning & at evening. The Jews also affirm that God at the time He gave the law, commanded them to repeat, morning & evening, their phylactory sentences, yet this command is not contained in the Bible, so that the Indian could learn it from there. Jewish historians say that, not only the tribes, but the families, or clans, in each tribe, kept distinct from each other in all their marches and encampments which in the wilderness the Indians affirm the same with regard to their tribes &