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Chapter. Introduction.. In their system of faith and worship, the Cherokee appear to have began to differ very early. It has cost us no brief study to discover what their first creed was, and when and how they came to diverge from it; branching off, afterwards, into innumerable varieties. We will now offer the result of our researches, divided with the carefulness which, upon a subject so entangled as we found it, seems indispensable to perspicuity. Our plan in this part of our investigations, is, to devote one chapter to a statement, in the first section, of what we consider the early, and, in their acceptation, the orthodox, faith of the Cherokee; and, in the second, of certain historical and moral traditions which highly respectable ancients of the tribe have represented as being therewith connected. Another chapter will be correspondently appropriated; the first section to a narrative of their various departures from the orthodox system; and in the second section