Secondly, I shall speak of their diet.
Thirdly, Of the customs which are peculiar to the sexes, and,
Fourthly, Of those customs which are common to them both[2].
I. Of the birth and treatment of their children.
Much of the future health of the body depends upon its original stamina. A child born of healthy parents always brings into the world a system formed by nature to resist the causes of diseases. The treatment of children among the Indians, tends to secure this hereditary firmness of constitution. Their first food is their mother's milk. To harden them against the action of heat and cold (the natural enemies of health and life among the Indians) they are plunged every day into cold water. In order to facilitate their being moved from place to place, and at the same time to preserve their shape, they are tied to a board, where they lie on their backs for six, ten, or eighteen months. A child generally sucks its mother till it is two years old, and sometimes longer. It is easy to conceive how much vigour their bodies must acquire from this simple, but wholesome nourishment. The appetite we sometimes observe in children for flesh is altogether artificial. The peculiar irritability of the system in infancy forbids stimulating aliment of all kinds. Nature never calls for animal food till she has provided the child with those teeth which are necessary to divide it. I shall not undertake to determine how far the wholesome quality of the mother's milk is increased by her refusing the embraces of her husband, during the time of giving suck.
II. The diet of the Indians is of a mixed nature, being partly animal and partly vegetable. Their animals are wild, and therefore easy of digestion. As the Indians are naturally more disposed to the indolent employment of fishing than hunting, in summer, so we find them living more upon fish than land animals, in that season of the year.—Their vegetables consist of roots and fruits, mild in themselves, or capable of being made so by the action of fire. Although the interior parts of our continent abound with salt springs, yet I cannot find that the Indians used salt in their diet, till they were instructed to do so by the Europeans. The small quantity of fixed alkali contained in the ashes on which they roasted their meat, could not add much to its stimulating quality. They preserve their meat from putrefaction, by cutting it into small pieces, and exposing it in summer to the sun, and in winter to the frost. In the one case its moisture is dissipated, and in the other so frozen, that it cannot undergo the putrefactive process. In dressing their meat, they are careful to preserve its juices. They generally prefer it in the form of soups. Hence we find, that among them the use of the spoon, preceded that of the knife and fork. They take the same pains to preserve the juice of their meat when they roast it, by turning it often. The efficacy of this animal juice, in dissolving meat in the stomach, has not been equalled by any of those sauces or liquors which modern luxury has mixed with it for that purpose.
The Indians have no set time for eating, but obey the gentle appetites of nature as often as they are called by them. After whole days spent in the chace or in war, they often commit those excesses in eating, to which long abstinence cannot fail of prompting them. It is common to see them spend three or four hours in satisfying their hunger. This is occasioned not more by the quantity they eat, than by the pains they take in masticating it. They carefully avoid drinking water in their marches, from an opinion that it lessens their ability to bear fatigue.
III. We now come to speak of those customs which are peculiar to the sexes. And, first, of those which belong to the WOMEN. They are doomed by their husbands to such domestic labour as gives a firmness to their bodies, bordering upon the masculine. Their menses seldom begin to flow before they are eighteen or twenty years of age, and generally cease before they are forty. They have them in small quantities, but at regular intervals. They seldom marry till they are about twenty. The constitution has now acquired a vigour, which enables it the better to support the convulsions of child-bearing. This custom likewise guards against a premature old age. Doctor Bancroft ascribes the haggard looks, the loose hanging breasts, and the prominent bellies of the Indian women at Guiana, entirely to their bearing children too early[3]. Where marriages are unfruitful (which is seldom the case) a separation is obtained by means of an easy divorce; so that they are unacquainted with the disquietudes which sometimes arise from barrenness. During pregnancy, the women are exempted from the more laborious parts of their duty: hence miscarriages rarely happen among them. Nature is their only midwife. Their labours are short, and accompanied with little pain. Each woman is delivered in a private cabin, without so much as one of her own sex to attend her. After washing herself in cold water, she returns in a few days to her usual employments; so that she knows nothing of those accidents which proceed from the carelessness or ill management of midwives; or those weaknesses which arise from a month's confinement in a warm room. It is remarkable that there is hardly a period in the interval between the eruption and the ceasing of the menses, in which they are not pregnant, or giving suck. This is the most natural state of the constitution during that interval; and hence we often find it connected with the best state of health, in the women of civilized nations.
The customs peculiar to the Indian MEN, consist chiefly in those employments which are necessary to preserve animal life, and to defend their nation. These employments are hunting and war, each of which is conducted in a manner that tends to call forth every fibre into exercise, and to ensure them the possession of the utmost possible health. In times of plenty and peace, we see them sometimes rising from their beloved indolence, and shaking off its influence by the salutary exercises of dancing and swimming. The Indian men seldom marry before they are thirty years of age: they no doubt derive considerable vigour from this custom; for while they are secured by it from the enervating effects of the premature dalliance of love, they may insure more certain fruitfulness to their wives, and entail more certain health upon their children. Tacitus describes the same custom among the Germans, and attributes to it the same good effects. “Sera juvenum venus, eoque inexhausta pubertas; nec virgines festinantur; eadem juventa, similis proceritas, pares validique miscentur; ac robora parentum liberi referunt[4].”