The armourers here alluded to are persons kept at the expence of government to repair the arms of the Indians when they happen to break, which is very commonly the case.
REMARKS.
An Indian child, soon after it is born, is swathed with cloths or skins, and being then laid on its back, is bound down on a piece of thick board, spread over with soft moss. The board is left somewhat longer and broader than the child, and bent pieces of wood, like pieces of hoops, are placed over its face to protect it, so that if the machine were suffered to fall the child would not probably be injured. The women, when they go abroad, carry their children thus tied down on their backs, the board being suspended by a broad band, which they wear round their foreheads. When they have any business to transact at home, they hang the board on a tree, if there be one at hand, and set them a swinging from side to side, like a pendulum, in order to exercise the children; sometimes also, I observed, they unloosened the children from the boards, and putting them each into a sort of little hammock, fastened them between two trees, and there suffered them to swing about. As soon as they are strong enough to crawl about on their hands and feet they are liberated from all confinement, and suffered, like young puppies, to run about, stark naked, into water, into mud, into snow, and, in short, to go wheresoever their choice leads them; hence they derive that vigour of constitution which enables them to support the greatest fatigue, and that indifference to the changes of the weather which they possess in common with the brute creation. The girls are covered with a loose garment as soon as they have attained four or five years of age, but the boys go naked till they are considerably older.
The Indians, as I have already remarked, are for the most part very slightly made, and from a survey of their persons one would imagine that they were much better qualified for any pursuits that required great agility than great bodily strength. This has been the general opinion of most of those who have written on this subject. I am induced, however, from what I have myself been witness to, and from what I have collected from others, to think that the Indians are much more remarkable for their muscular strength than for their agility. At different military posts on the frontiers, where this subject has been agitated, races, for the sake of experiment, have frequently been made between soldiers and Indians, and provided the distance was not great, the Indians have almost always been beaten; but in a long race, where strength of muscle was required, they have without exception been victorious; in leaping also the Indians have been infallibly beaten by such of the soldiers as possessed common activity: but the strength of the Indians is most conspicuous in the carrying of burthens on their backs; they esteem it nothing to walk thirty miles a day for several days together under a load of eight stone, and they will walk an entire day under a load without taking any refreshment. In carrying burdens they make use of a sort of frame, somewhat similar to what is commonly used by a glazier to carry glass; this is fastened by cords, or strips of tough bark or leather, round their shoulders, and when the load is fixed upon the broad ledge at the bottom of the frame, two bands are thrown round the whole, one of which is brought across the forehead, and the other across the breast, and thus the load is supported. The length of way an Indian will travel in the course of the day, when unencumbered with a load, is astonishing. A young Wyandot, who, when peace was about to be made between the Indians and General Wayne, was employed to carry a message from his nation to the American officer, travelled but little short of eighty miles on foot in one day; and I was informed by one of the general’s aids-de-camp, who saw him when he arrived at the camp, that he did not appear in the least degree fatigued.
MEMORY OF THE INDIANS.
Le P. Charlevoix observes, that the Indians seem to him to possess many personal advantages over us; their senses, in particular, he thinks much finer than ours; their sight is, indeed, quick and penetrating, and it does not fail them till they are far advanced in years, notwithstanding that their eyes are exposed so many months each winter to the dazzling whiteness of the snow, and to the sharp irritating smoke of wood fires. Disorders in the eyes are almost wholly unknown to them; nor is the slightest blemish ever seen in their eyes, excepting it be a result from some accident. Their hearing is very acute, and their sense of smelling so nice, that they can tell when they are approaching a fire long before it is in sight.
The Indians have most retentive memories; they will preserve to their deaths a recollection of any place they have once passed through; they never forget a face that they have attentively observed but for a few seconds; at the end of many years they will repeat every sentence of the speeches that have been delivered by different individuals in a public assembly; and has any speech been made in the council house of the nation, particularly deserving of remembrance, it will be handed down with the utmost accuracy from one generation to another, though perfectly ignorant of the use of hieroglyphicks and letters; the only memorials of which they avail themselves are small pieces of wood, such as I told you were brought by them to Captain E——, preparatory to the delivery of the presents, and belts of wampum; the former are only used on trifling occasions, the latter never but on very grand and solemn ones. Whenever a conference, or a talk as they term it, is about to be held with any neighbouring tribe, or whenever any treaty or national compact is about to be made, one of these belts, differing in some respect from every other that has been made before, is immediately constructed; each person in the assembly holds this belt in his band whilst he delivers his speech, and when he has ended, he presents it to the next person that rises, by which ceremony each individual is reminded, that it behoves him to be cautious in his discourse, as all he says will be faithfully recorded by the belt. The talk being over, the belt is deposited in the hands of the principal chief.
On the ratification of a treaty, very broad splendid belts are reciprocally given by the contracting parties, which are deposited amongst the other belts belonging to the nation. At stated intervals they are all produced to the nation, and the occasions upon which they were made are mentioned; if they relate to a talk, one of the chiefs repeats the substance of what was said over them; if to a treaty, the terms of it are recapitulated. Certain of the squaws, also, are entrusted with the belts, whose business it is to relate the history of each one of them to the younger branches of the tribe; this they do with great accuracy, and thus it is that the remembrance of every important transaction is kept up.
WAMPUM.
The wampum is formed of the inside of the clam shell, a large sea shell bearing some similitude to that of a scallop, which is found on the coasts of New England and Virginia. The shell is sent in its original rough state to England, and there cut into small pieces, exactly similar in shape and size to the modern glass bugles worn by ladies, which little bits of shell constitute wampum. There are two sorts of wampum, the white and the purple; the latter is most esteemed by the Indians, who think a pound weight of it equally valuable with a pound of silver. The wampum is strung upon bits of leather, and the belt is composed of ten, twelve, or more strings, according to the importance of the occasion on which it is made; sometimes also the wampum is sowed in different patterns on broad belts of leather.