They are ingenious, witty, cunning, and deceitful; very faithful indeed to their own tribes, but privately dishonest, and mischievous to the Europeans and christians. Their being honest and harmless to each other, may be through fear of resentment and reprisal—which is unavoidable in case of any injury. {4} They are very close, and retentive of their secrets; never forget injuries; revengeful of blood, to a degree of distraction. They are timorous, and, consequently, cautious; very jealous of encroachments from their christian neighbours[neighbours]; and, likewise, content with freedom, in every turn of fortune. They are possessed of a strong comprehensive judgment,—can form surprisingly crafty schemes, and conduct them with equal caution, silence, and address; they admit none but distinguished warriors, and old beloved men, into their councils. They are slow, but very persevering in their undertakings—commonly temperate in eating, but excessively immoderate in drinking.—They often transform themselves by liquor into the likeness of mad foaming bears. The women, in general, are of a mild, amiable, soft disposition: exceedingly modest in their behaviour, and very seldom noisy, either in the single, or married state.
The men are expert in the use of fire-arms,—in shooting the bow,—and throwing the feathered dart, and tomohawk, into the flying enemy. They resemble the lynx, with their sharp penetrating black eyes, and are exceedingly swift of foot; especially in a long chase: they will stretch away, through the rough woods, by the bare track, for two or three hundred miles, in pursuit of a flying enemy, with the continued speed, and eagerness, of a stanch pack of blood hounds, till they shed blood.[[4]] When they have allayed this their burning thirst, they return home, at their leisure, unless they chance to be pursued, as is sometimes the case; whence the traders say, “that an Indian is never in a hurry, but when the devil is at his heels.”
It is remarkable, that there are no deformed Indians—however, they are generally weaker, and smaller bodied, between the tropics, than in the higher latitudes; but not in an equal proportion: for, though the Chikkasah and Choktah countries have not been long divided from each other, as appears by the similarity of their language, as well as other things, yet the Chikkasah are exceedingly taller, and stronger bodied than the latter, though their country is only two degrees farther north. Such a small difference of latitude, in so healthy a region, could not make so wide a difference in the constitution of their bodies. The former are a comely, pleasant looking people; their faces are tolerably round, contrary to the visage of the others, which inclines much to flatness, as is the case of most of the other Indian Americans. The lips of the Indians, in general, are thin. {5}
Their eyes are small, sharp, and black; and their hair is lank, coarse, and darkish.[[5]] I never saw any with curled hair, but one in the Choktah country, where was also another with red hair; probably, they were a mixture of the French and Indians. Romancing travellers, and their credulous copyists, report them to be imbarbes, and as persons impuberes, and they appear so to strangers. But both sexes pluck all the hair off their bodies, with a kind of tweezers, made formerly of clam-shells, now of middle-sized wire, in the shape of a gun-worm; which, being twisted round a small stick, and the ends fastened therein, after being properly tempered, keeps its form: holding this Indian razor between their fore-finger and thumb, they deplume themselves,[[6]] after the manner of the Jewish novitiate priests, and proselytes.—As the former could not otherwise be purified for the function of his sacerdotal office; or the latter, be admitted to the benefit of religious communion.
Their chief dress is very simple, like that of the patriarchal age; of choice, many of their old head-men wear a long wide frock, made of the skins of wild beasts, in honour of that antient custom: It must be necessity that forces them to the pinching sandals for their feet. They seem quite easy, and indifferent, in every various scene of life, as if they were utterly divested of passions, and the sense of feeling. Martial virtue, and not riches, is their invariable standard for preferment; for they neither esteem, nor despise any of their people one jot more or less, on account of riches or dress. They compare both these, to paint on a warrior’s face; because it incites others to a spirit of martial benevolence for their country, and pleases his own fancy, and the eyes of spectators, for a little time, but is sweated off, while he is performing his war-dances; or is defaced, by the change of weather.
They formerly wore shirts, made of drest deer-skins, for their summer visiting dress: but their winter-hunting clothes were long and shaggy, made of the skins of panthers, bucks, bears, beavers, and otters; the fleshy sides outward, sometimes doubled, and always softened like velvet-cloth, though they retained their fur and hair. The needles and thread they used formerly, (and now at times) were fish-bones, or the horns and bones of deer, rubbed sharp, and deer’s sinews, and a sort of hemp, that grows among them spontaneously, in rich open lands. The women’s dress consists only in a {6} broad softened skin, or several small skins sewed together, which they wrap and tye round their waist, reaching a little below their knees: in cold weather, they wrap themselves in the softened skins of buffalo calves, with the wintery shagged wool inward, never forgetting to anoint, and tie up their hair, except in their time of mourning. The men wear, for ornament, and the conveniencies of hunting, thin deer-skin boots, well smoked, that reach so high up their thighs, as with their jackets to secure them from the brambles and braky thickets. They sew them about five inches from the edges, which are formed into tossels, to which they fasten fawns trotters, and small pieces of tinkling metal, or wild turkey-cockspurs. The beaus used to fasten the like to their war-pipes, with the addition of a piece of an enemy’s scalp with a tuft of long hair hanging down from the middle of the stem, each of them painted red: and they still observe that old custom, only they choose bell-buttons, to give a greater sound.
The young Indian men and women,[[7]] through a fondness of their ancient dress, wrap a piece of cloth round them, that has a near resemblance to the old Roman toga, or prætexta. ’Tis about a fathom square, bordered seven or eight quarters deep, to make a shining cavalier of the beau monde, and to keep out both the heat and cold. With this frantic apparel, the red heroes swaddle themselves, when they are waddling, whooping, and prancing it away, in their sweltery town-houses, or supposed synhedria, around the reputed holy fire. In a sweating condition, they will thus incommode themselves, frequently, for a whole night, on the same principle of pride, that the grave Spaniard’s winter cloak must sweat him in summer.
They have a great aversion to the wearing of breeches; for to that custom, they affix the idea of helplessness, and effeminacy. I know a German of thirty years standing, chiefly among the Chikkasah Indians, who because he kept up his breeches with a narrow piece of cloth that reached across his shoulders, is distinguished by them, as are all his countrymen, by the despicable appellative, Kish-Kish Tarākshe, or Tied Arse.—They esteem the English much more than the Germans, because our limbs, they say, are less restrained by our apparel from manly exercise, than theirs. The Indian women also discreetly observe, that, as all their men sit down to make {7} water, the ugly breeches would exceedingly incommode them; and that, if they were allowed to wear breeches, it would portend no good to their country: however, they add, should they ever be so unlucky, as to have that pinching custom introduced among them, the English breeches would best suit their own female posture on that occasion; but that it would be exceedingly troublesome either way. The men wear a slip of cloth, about a quarter of an ell wide, and an ell and an half long, in the lieu of breeches; which they put between their legs, and tye round their haunches, with a convenient broad bandage. The women, since the time we first traded with them, wrap a fathom of the half breadth of Stroud cloth[[8]] round their waist, and tie it with a leathern belt, which is commonly covered with brass runners or buckles: but this sort of loose petticoat, reaches only to their hams, in order to shew their exquisitely fine proportioned limbs.
They make their shoes for common use, out of the skins of the bear and elk, well dressed and smoked, to prevent hardening; and those for ornament, out of deer-skins, done in the like manner: but they chiefly go bare-footed, and always bare-headed. The men fasten several different sorts of beautiful feathers, frequently in tufts; or the wing of a red bird, or the skin of a small hawk, to a lock of hair on the crown of their heads. And every different Indian nation when at war, trim their hair, after a different manner, through contempt of each other; thus we can distinguish an enemy in the woods, so far off as we can see him.
The Indians flatten their heads, in divers forms: but it is chiefly the crown of the head they depress, in order to beautify themselves, as their wild fancy terms it; for they call us long heads, by way of contempt. The Choktah Indians flatten their fore-heads, from the top of the head to the eye-brows with a small bag of sand; which gives them a hideous appearance; as the forehead naturally shoots upward, according as it is flattened: thus, the rising of the nose, instead of being equidistant from the beginning of the chin, to that of the hair, is, by their wild mechanism, placed a great deal nearer to the one, and farther from the other.[[9]] The Indian nations, round South-Carolina, and all the way to New Mexico, (properly called Mechiko) to effect this, fix the tender infant on a kind of cradle, where his feet are tilted, above a foot higher than a horizontal position, {8} —his head bends back into a hole, made on purpose to receive it, where he bears the chief part of his weight on the crown of the head, upon a small bag of sand, without being in the least able to move himself. The skull resembling a fine cartilaginous substance, in its infant state, is capable of taking any impression. By this pressure, and their thus flattening the crown of the head, they consequently make their heads thick, and their faces broad: for, when the smooth channel of nature is stopped in one place, if a destruction of the whole system doth not thereby ensue, it breaks out in a proportional redundancy, in another. May we not to this custom, and as a necessary effect of this cause, attribute their fickle, wild, and cruel tempers? especially, when we connect therewith, both a false education, and great exercise to agitate their animal spirits. When the brain, in cooler people, is disturbed, it neither reasons, nor determines, with proper judgment? The Indians thus look on every thing around them, through their own false medium; and vilify our heads, because they have given a wrong turn to their own. {9}