210.—CREEK INDIANS.
In his travels through the United States and Canada, M. H. Deville had an opportunity of visiting an establishment of Iroquois. These savages were remarkable for their reddish colour and coarse features. They wore round hats with broad brims, and robed themselves in Spanish fashion in a piece of dark cloth.
The manufacture of the native coverings for the legs and feet forms the principal occupation of the women, and under the pretext of purchasing some of their handiwork M. Deville entered several Iroquois dwellings.
Divested of the thick mantle worn by them out of doors, the women had assumed a long, coloured smock-frock with tight-fitting pantaloons that reached to the ankles, and their varnished shoes allowed coarse worsted stockings to be seen. Earrings and a gold necklace constituted their chief ornament. Their hair is drawn up to the top of the head and tied there in a knot. To say that their features are agreeable would be untrue, but in early youth their figures are rather handsome. Work, order, and cleanliness reign in their household. Their brothers and husbands are wood-cutters, steersmen, or conductors of rafts.
The same traveller met with some Chippeway Indians on the heights of Lake Pepin. Their stature was tall, but they had coarse features, and a skin of a very dark reddish colour. Half their face was covered by a thick layer of vermilion extending as far as their hair, which was plaited over the crown. They wore long leather gaiters, tied at the sides by innumerable thongs, and over a sort of tattered blouse was thrown a large woollen blanket, which completely covered them. One individual, armed with a long steel blade shaped like a dagger, had stuck his pipe in his hair.
In his “Voyage dans les Mauvaises Terres du Nebraska,” M. de Girardin (of Maine-et-Loire) describes his journey across part of the Missouri basin occupied by some free and wild Indians.
He brought back with him sketches and illustrations of those tribes, the principal among which are the Blackfeet, and the Dacotas, or Sioux, and was present at a grand council of the latter nation, The chiefs of the various clans, clad in their most brilliant costumes, harangued the warriors, whilst a score of young braves, without any other covering than a thick coat of vermilion or ochre, made their steeds curvet and executed numberless fanciful manœuvres. The horses were painted yellow, red, and white, and had their long tails decked with bright-coloured feathers.
