Painting and Tattooing.
Tattooings were sometimes observed on their wrists and arms and breasts, but the custom was not so general as with the northern tribes.
They, however, in common with other Indian peoples, were accustomed to the use of paints in decorating the body. They had their own native paints, some made from ground stone, others from a certain kind of clay. They had also very strong dyes from sundry kinds of roots and bark; also an oily substance from salmon roe, as well as several kinds of gum from trees.
In dressing they painted the eyebrows black, like a half moon, the face sometimes checked in small red squares, arms and legs and part of the body red. Sometimes but half the face was painted red in squares, and sometimes black. At other times the whole face was as black as tar. Some also covered the face with a quantity of bear’s grease, almost an eighth of an inch thick, or laid it on in ridges like beads in a joiner’s work and then painted the ridge red.
They often told us that on a hot day this was to keep the sun from burning the face, and in the winter they claimed it kept the cold, sharp wind from cutting or chapping the skin.
Chiefs and people of rank used a kind of mineral or black shining powder, glistening in the sun like silver, taken from the rocks.
The picture of a fierce warrior, almost nude, painted up with these striking colors, and brandishing a knife, stone axe or war-club, and in later years armed with a flint-lock musket, was enough to terrify the beholder.
As for the ornamental effect of painting the person, of course that is a matter of taste with the Indian, as with other people. These colors were not easily removed in washing, and often had to wear off.