"From the trader who was present at the destruction of the Mandans I had many most wonderful incidents of this dreadful scene, but I dread to recite them. Among them, however, there is one that I must briefly describe, relative to the death of that noble gentleman, of whom I have already said so much, and to whom I became so much attached, Mah-to-to-pa, or 'the Four Bears.' This fine fellow sat in his wigwam and watched every one of his family die about him, his wives and his little children, after he had recovered from the disease himself, when he walked out round the village, and wept over the final destruction of his tribe; his braves and warriors, whose sinewy arms alone he could depend on for a continuance of their existence, all laid low; when he came back to his lodge, where he carried his whole family in a pile, with a number of robes, and wrapping another around himself, went out upon a hill at a little distance, where he laid several days, despite all the solicitations of the traders, resolved to starve himself to death. He remained there till the sixth day, when he had just strength enough to creep back to the village, when he entered the horrid gloom of his own wigwam, and, laying his body alongside of the group of his family, drew his robe over him, and died on the ninth day of his fatal abstinence.
"So have perished the friendly and hospitable Mandans, from the best accounts I could get; and although it may be possible that some few individuals may yet be remaining, I think it is not probable; and one thing is certain, even if such be the case, that, as a nation, the Mandans are extinct, having no longer an existence.
"There is yet a melancholy part of the tale to be told, relating to the ravages of this frightful disease in that country on the same occasion, as it spread to other contiguous tribes, to the Minatarrees, the Knisteneaux, the Blackfeet, the Chayennes, and Crows, among whom 25,000 perished in the course of four or five months, which most appalling facts I got from Major Pilcher, now Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis, from Mr. M'Kenzie, and others."—Catlin's American Indians, vol. ii., p. 257.
No. XLIII.
"In man the coloring matter seems to be deposited in the dermoidal system by the roots or the bulbs of the hair,[228] and all sound observations prove that the skin varies in color from the action of external stimuli on individuals, and is not hereditary in the whole race. The Eskimoes of Greenland, and the Laplanders, are tanned by the influence of the air, but their children are born white. We will not decide on the changes which Nature may produce in a space of time, exceeding all historical traditions. Reason stops short in these matters when no longer under the guidance of experience and analogy. The nations that have a white skin begin their cosmogony by white men; according to them, the negroes and all tawny people have been blackened or embrowned by the excessive heat of the sun. This theory, adopted by the Greeks, though not without contradiction (Onesicritus apud Strabon, lib. xv., p. 983), has been propagated even to our own times. Buffon has repeated, in prose, what Theodectes had expressed in verse two thousand years before, 'that the nations wear the livery of the climate they inhabit.' If history had been written by black nations, they would have maintained what even Europeans have recently advanced (Prichard's Researches into the Physical History of Man, 1813), p. 233, 239, that man was originally black, or of a very tawny color, and that he has whitened in some races from the effect of civilization and progressive debilitation, as animals in a state of domestication pass from dark to lighter colors. I shall here cite the authority of Ulloa. This learned man has seen the Indians of Chili, of the Andes, of Peru, of the burning coasts of Panama, and those of Louisiana, situated under the northern temperate zone. He had the good fortune to live at a time when theories were less numerous, and, like me, he was struck at seeing the native under the line as much bronzed as brown, in the cold climate of the Cordilleras as in the plains. Where differences of color are observed, they depend on the race."—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. iii., p. 298.
FOOTNOTES:
[228] According to the interesting researches of Mr. Gaultier, on the Organization of the Human Skin, p. 57. John Hunter observes, that in several animals, the coloration of the hair is independent of that of the skin.
Blumenbach informs us how climate operates in modifying the color of the skin. He states that the proximate cause of the dark color of the integuments in an abundance of carbon, secreted by the skin with hydrogen, precipitated and fixed in the rete mucosum by the contact of the atmospheric oxygen.—De Variet., p. 124.
If Voltaire is to be believed, no well-informed person formerly passed by Leyden without seeing a part of the black membrane (the reticulum mucosum) of a negro, dissected by the celebrated Ruysell. Their error is, however, now universally admitted. The "rete mucosum" has been discovered to be nothing but the latest layer of epidermis, the inner surface of which is being continually renewed as the exterior is worn away, just like the bark of a tree. There is no distinct coloring layer, it appears, either in the fair or the dark-skinned races, the peculiar hue of the latter depending upon the presence of coloring matter in the cells of the epidermis itself. Color, therefore, is not even skin deep, for it does not reach the true skin, being entirely confined to the epidermis or scarf skin.
No. XLIV.