Of more than equal interest with the magnificent wilderness and its animal occupants was the human dweller within its broad limits, the Amerind,[18] commonly called the Indian. Still another name for him was Red Man, yet he was neither an Indian nor was he red, except when he painted himself with ochre and vermilion. His real colour was various shades of brown or bronze, rather yellowish than red where protected from the sun. We are not surprised that roses of different hue grow in a garden, but there has always been unwarranted amazement that different shades of men should be found in the garden of the universe. There appears to be no reason why men should not vary in colour as well as all other animals and plants. But though races of mankind may vary in colour they never, so far as now determined, have varied in any other essential; or at least only slightly in fundamental characteristics. In general physical composition all men to-day are identical, and there is no certain evidence that they have ever differed more than they now do.[19] Man is everywhere the same as far back in the ages as he can be traced. Some may be stronger, or larger, or shorter, than others, with brains more or less developed, but they are all practically alike, even to their emotions.
A Village of the Plains.
This form of tipi was readily taken down and as readily set up again.
Photograph by U. S. Government.
Races, as a whole, differ from each other, in their ability to make machines, in their ability to secure comfort, in language, and in their social regulations; differences of degree. These qualities are begun and fostered more by stimulating circumstances than by particular superiority of race. For example, the Europeans forged ahead mainly because they were possessed of animals easily domesticated that would supply their needs. The Amerind had no such animals in North America except the bison and the dog. The latter he utilised to the full as a draught and pack animal, as a wool producer, and as a supply of animal food. Why he did not domesticate the bison is a problem. Perhaps it was because there were too many of them. The store of animal food was usually over-abundant with all Amerinds living in the range of the buffalo, so there was no spur to economy. We may imagine that if the buffalo from time to time had appeared in comparatively small numbers in the thickly populated country of the Aztecs where animal food was so scarce that an elaborate system of human sacrifices developed to supply this deficiency, the latter eventually would have been abandoned and captive buffalo substituted for captive man. Domestication, to guard the supply, would then have been an easy step. But the buffalo was permitted to roam at will, and the dog remained the sole domestic animal in possession of the people of North America before the arrival of the white race.[20]
The Amerind was not a savage. He was a barbarian with a rather well ordered society. He possessed a high quality of intellect, and he differed from his white antagonist more in external complexion than in any other particular except his social organisation, which was one the white man had passed through and left behind in centuries far past. But the Amerind had the same emotions. He loved his home, his family,—as constituted by his social regulations,—and his children. As to honesty and dishonesty, the balance was certainly not far from even, average for average; if anything, the Amerind had more respect for the ideals of his race than was the case with the white man with reference to his. Of course he had abundant vices like all the rest of humanity. He was often horribly cruel to his enemies. But on the whole he was not worse than the European who brought him degradation; who frequently soaked him with cheap rum and alcohol, in order more easily to exchange nothing for valuable furs: who engrafted upon him more and worse vices, who shot him needlessly, and who reviled him as he sank helpless under the heavy tide of imposition. Love of home and defence of country are ever extolled as of the highest merit in the white race; in the American native they were crimes. From the beginning of the contact the Amerind began to change for the worse.
