Their complexion, when freed from the paint and oil with which their skins are generally covered, is a brown, somewhat inclining to a copper cast. The shape of the face is oval; the features are tolerably regular, the lips being thin and the teeth very white and even; their eyes are black but rather small, and the nose pretty well formed, being neither flat nor very prominent; their hair is black, long, and coarse, but they have no beard, completely extirpating it, as well as the hair from their bodies, Maquina being the only exception, who suffered his beard to grow on his upper lip in the manner of mustachios, which was considered as a mark of dignity.
As to the women, they are much whiter, many of them not being darker than those in some of the southern parts of Europe. They are in general very well-looking, and some quite handsome. Maquina's favourite wife in particular, who was a Wickinninish princess, would be considered as a beautiful woman in any country. She was uncommonly well formed, tall, and of a majestic appearance; her skin remarkably fair for one of these people, with considerable colour, her features handsome, and her eyes black, soft, and languishing; her hair was very long, thick, and black, as is that of the females in general, which is much softer than that of the men; in this they take much pride, frequently oiling and plaiting it carefully into two broad plaits, tying the ends with a strip of the cloth of the country, and letting it hang down before on each side of the face.
The women keep their garments much neater and cleaner than the men, and are extremely modest in their deportment and dress; their mantle, or kutsack, which is longer than that of the men, reaching quite to their feet and completely enveloping them, being tied close under the chin, and bound with a girdle of the same cloth or of sea-otter skin around their waists; it has also loose sleeves, which reach to the elbows. Though fond of ornamenting their persons, they are by no means so partial to paint as the men, merely colouring their eyebrows black and drawing a bright red stripe from each corner of the mouth towards the ear. Their ornaments consist chiefly of ear-rings, necklaces, bracelets, rings for the fingers and ankles, and small nose-jewels (the latter are, however, wholly confined to the wives of the king or chiefs); these are principally made out of copper or brass, highly polished and of various forms and sizes; the nose-jewel is usually a small white shell[76] or bead suspended to a thread.
The wives of the common people frequently wear for bracelets and ankle rings strips of the country cloth or skin of the metamelth painted in figures, and those of the king or principal chiefs, bracelets and necklaces consisting of a number of strings of Ife-waw, an article much prized by them, and which makes a very handsome appearance. This Ife-waw, as they term it, is a kind of shell of a dazzling whiteness and as smooth as ivory; it is of a cylindrical form, in a slight degree curved, about the size of a goose quill, hollow, three inches in length and gradually tapering to a point, which is broken off by the natives as it is taken from the water; this they afterwards string upon threads of bark and sell it by the fathom; it forms a kind of circulating medium among these nations, five fathoms being considered as the price of a slave, their most valuable species of property. It is principally obtained from the Aitizzarts, a people living about thirty or forty miles to the northward, who collect it from the reefs and sunken rocks with which their coast abounds, though it is also brought in considerable quantity from the south.[77]
Their mode of taking it has been thus described to me:—To one end of a pole is fastened a piece of plank, in which a considerable number of pine pegs are inserted, made sharp at the ends; above the plank, in order to sink it, a stone or some weight is tied, and the other end of the pole suspended to a long rope; this is let down perpendicularly by the Ife-waw fishers in those places where that substance is found, which are usually from fifty to sixty fathoms deep. On finding the bottom, they raise the pole up a few feet and let it fall; this they repeat a number of times, as if sounding, when they draw it up and take off the Ife-waw which is found adhering to the points. This method of procuring it is very laborious and fatiguing, especially as they seldom take more than two or three of these shells at a time, and frequently none.
Though the women, as I have said, make but little use of paint, the very reverse is the case with the men. In decorating their heads and faces they place their principal pride, and none of our most fashionable beaus when preparing for a grand ball can be more particular; for I have known Maquina, after having been employed more than an hour in painting his face, rub the whole off, and recommence the operation anew, when it did not entirely please him.
The manner in which they paint themselves frequently varies, according to the occasion, but it oftener is the mere dictate of whim. The most usual method is to paint the eyebrows black in form of a half-moon and the face red in small squares, with the arms and legs and part of the body red; sometimes one half of the face is painted red in squares and the other black; at others dotted with spots of red and black instead of squares, with a variety of other devices, such as painting one half of the face and body red and the other black.