Strength and Endurance
Their powers in lifting weights, handling an ox or rowing a boat can not compare to Europeans, yet they equal them in carrying burdens and surpass them in running. It would seem that they have but little strength in their arms, but considerable in the back and limbs. This may be owing to the manner in which they have exercised in their youth. An ordinary Indian can not lift more than 125 to 150 pounds at most, though there are a few very strong men who might be able to raise double that weight, yet most of them will carry a large deer on their backs, traveling at a swift pace for miles without stopping, and this is equal to 170 to 185 pounds weight. The manner in which they put it on their back is by tying the legs together, lying down with their back on the deer, slipping the legs across the forehead, and rising up with the load. The Assiniboin have frequently in this neighborhood and once in our company tired down in a day or two running on foot the best horses we could produce.[25] In running they never “lose their breath” as it is called, do not pant or respire very quickly.
They can not understand why “whites lose their wind in running” and have no name for the idea in their language. They say their legs sometimes fail them in several days running, but their wind never. They are not fast, but constant runners, keeping always at the same pace over hills or on a level, in a kind of short trot about 12 or 15 miles without stopping. They will then rest a few minutes, smoke a pipe, and make as much more at the same rate, and so on, for three or four days and nights in succession if necessary, their speed on these occasions being about 5½ miles an hour. In an emergency, sending an Indian express to the fort to carry a letter for myself, he went 95 miles and returned, being 190 miles, in two nights and one day.
They can not walk as well as strong white men, and never do walk when in haste to get forward. The muscles of their arms do not appear to be formed for very hard work, but it may be that the nature of their labors does not develop them. Upon the whole the European would stand much more hard work in every way, but the Indian would be his superior in active exercise, abstemiousness, and loss of sleep. The greatest burden we have known an Indian to carry any distance, say 3 or 4 miles, was two entire antelope, about 225 pounds.