“From the North Pole even to Tierra del Fuego,” says Maury, “there is scarcely a shade of human colouring which is not manifested, from the black to the yellow. The aborigines, according to their nation, are of a brown-olive, a dark brown, bronze, pale yellow, copper yellow, red, white, brown, &c. Their stature does not vary less. Between the stature, not gigantic but very tall, of the Patagonians and the dwarf-like proportions of the Changos, we meet with a host of intermediary ‘sizes.’ The proportions of the body present the same diversity; some peoples have the bust very long, like the tribes of the Pampas; others, short and broad, like the inhabitants of the Peruvian Andes; the same is the case with the shape and size of the head. Yet we recognize between the various American populations an air of kinship, certain general features which distinguish them from the races of the Old World. Among these features must be placed, in the front rank, the pyramidal form of the head and the narrowness of the forehead—characteristics of great antiquity among the American populations, since they belong to skulls discovered by Mr. Lund in the caves of Brazil associated with the bones of extinct animals.”
Spite of this diversity of type, we may divide the Indians of America into two races, of which one at least, the Red Skins, is remarkable for its complete homogeneity. The Red Skins were formerly distributed over all the upper portion of the American continent—that is, over the territory of Canada and the United States, and the northern districts of Mexico. In the sixteenth century they numbered a million and a half of souls. They are now reduced to a few thousand families. A few years more, and American rifles, brandy, and poverty, will have completed the extermination of this indomitable race, which has deserved at least the respect and the recognition due to honourable courage of those who have dispossessed them from the immense territories they formerly enjoyed. It is true, however, that we must not take our estimate of the Red Skins from the romantic pages of Chateaubriand or Fenimore Cooper. We must not delude ourselves into a belief that the North American tribes are or were composed of Deerskins, Hawkeyes, and Leatherstockings. Yet we cannot refuse to them a character of real grandeur and true nobility. Their contempt of death and suffering, their stoical composure under the severest tortures, their disdain of civilization, their horror of foreign supremacy, their haughtiness, and even their cold and reflective ferocity, are so many traits which place them, in a moral sense, far above the majority of the other savage races. A hundred times in romance, song, and drama have been described the manners of the Red Skins, their stratagems in war and the chase, the perseverance with which they hunt down their enemy or their prey, their cunning, their impassiveness, their vengeance. Who among us has not eagerly followed them in their long journeys across the rolling savannahs and through the primeval forests? Who has not listened eagerly, when, seated round the watch-fire, with the calumet to their lips, they have deliberated gravely on peace and war? Who has not seen them with alarm dashing to the combat on their nimble chargers, brandishing the tomahawk and scalping their conquered victims, whose scalps they hung up in their wigwams as trophies to their prowess? Who has not followed them breathlessly when on the trail of a flying foe, or winding serpent-like through the thick brush-wood in escape from some persistent pursuer? Assuredly these men were well worthy of study; and it is impossible to peruse their history or the narrative of their adventures without a breathless interest. There was poetry in their faith, in their customs, in their language at once laconic and picturesque, and even in the names which they bestowed on each tribe, each chief, each warrior. One can hardly suppress a feeling of regret that so much wild romance should have been swept from the face of the earth, unless we call to mind the shadows of the picture—the Indian’s cruelty, perfidiousness, and savage lust. Even then our humanity revolts from the treatment to which he has been subjected by the “white man.” Tracked and hunted like wild beasts, driven back from one hunting-ground to another, embruted by misery or drunkenness, incapable of labour, the poor Indians have vainly struggled against the all-devouring influence of a civilization without bowels, ill adapted to attract and persuade them, and far less solicitous to assimilate than to destroy them. The great nations which were formerly the valued allies or dreaded enemies of the European settlers, the Hurons, Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Natchez, the Leni-Lenapes, have entirely disappeared. The wrecks of other but less important nations still exist on the shores of the great northern lakes, in the Far West, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, in California, in Texas, in Arkansas, and in the northern provinces and deserts of Mexico. Such are the Sioux, the Dacotahs, the Flatheads, the Big-Bellies, the Blackfoot, the Apaches, the Comanches. The two latter people have, above all, preserved a certain vitality. Their characteristics, it is said, are very diverse. The Comanches are of a mild, gentle nature, and eager to live on peaceable terms with the Whites. The Apaches, on the contrary, have vowed a relentless hatred against the Pale Faces; they are the terror of the hacienderos[188] and gold-seekers of Upper Mexico, and the American journals frequently contain accounts of their incursions, their acts of brigandage, and cruelty.
The most characteristic features of the Red Skin type are, in addition to the colour of the skin and the pyramidal form of the head, the prominency and arched outline of the nose, the greatness of the nasal openings, corresponding to a singular development of the olfactory nerve, and the absence of beard. Several tribes subject the head of the new-born to a systematic mis-shapement by compressing it. Hence has arisen the nickname of Flat-heads, popularly bestowed on the Choctaws. The same custom existed among the Atacapas, the Creeks, the Muskogis, and the Catawhas, and is found among most tribes of the Californian stock.
The peoples who have alternately dominated in Mexico and Central America, and who are now in great part destroyed—the Chichinequas, the Toltequas, and the Aztecs—are allied to the Red Man by their physical peculiarities as well as by their moral characteristics. The comparatively advanced civilization which the Spanish conquerors found established in Mexico had not effaced among the Indians the sanguinary instincts and vindictive propensities of their savage ancestors.
The race, or rather races which people South America are very far from offering the same homogeneity as the populations of North America. These races are four in number, each of which may be subdivided into several distinct branches.
The Guarani, or Carib race, formerly occupied the Antilles, and on the mainland extended as far as Paraguay. It is principally distinguished by the yellow colour of its skin, by the rounded contour of its visage, by the flatness of the nose, and the oblique disposition of the eyes. It comprises three branches: that of the Caribs properly so called, that of the Guaranis, and that of the Botocoudos.