CHEROKEE PHOENIX AND INDIANS' ADVOCATE
Wednesday July 15, 1829
Vol. II, no. 15
Page 2, col. 1b.

 MR. BOUDINOTT,- By such inquiries as my opportunities allow, I can but just pick up here and there a scrap of information respecting those former customs of your people which are fast fading from memory.  This fact but ill accords with a remark of the North American Review, of which you have taken notice, respecting the tenacity with which the Aborigines hold their former superstitions and practices, so far as that remark applies to this nation.

 Since my last communication, I have been informed by a respectable citizen, that, when he was young, the aged men used to caution the young against eating a part of any animal, which appears to correspond with "the sinew that shrank" of the Jews.  "Much of the agility of a young man", said they," depends upon the strength of that part of the thigh.  If you eat this, you will become weak, where you most need strength, and unfit for hunting.  As for us, who are old, it is no harm for us to eat it, for we are worth nothing at any rate."
         W.

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