These fellows might, on the high seas, be easily mistaken for pirates; here they are understood to belong to some one of the many snaky schooners lying here, hailing from Havannah and the various ports along the Mexican Gulf, and whose calling may be honest enough, but which certainly look as though the necessity of stowing a cargo had been quite overlooked in their building.
Meantime, circling about the outside of the building, stroll a band of twenty or thirty Indians, dressed in all the picturesque, draggled finery it is their delight to exhibit; the men half drunk or wholly so, thrusting, as they pass, their filthy fingers into the negro girls' baskets, and hiccuping forth some inquiry, to be repulsed by a monosyllable or a look of contempt and anger, the sight of which excites sorrow that any creature wearing the form of humanity should be fallen so low as to be subject to it. The squaws are never seen in this brutal condition; they crawl about with a load of light wood at their backs, or, having disposed of their venture, may be seen seated on their heels, telling their beads, or pulling their fingers through their thick black hair, that, if kept clean, would be beautiful, or in some other way tricking forth their charms to all advantage; for, though generally as ugly as sin, they are as full of coquetry as any belle of May-fair, and as vain of admiration; of the which, to say truth, they appear to come in for more than a share from our tars, two or three of whom may usually be seen lounging alongside the youngest of the native group, looking things they know not how to utter.
In this market of the Levee there is also an abundant display of fish, flesh, and fowl, with as varied a store of earth's fruits as any one place can produce. In the month of February we had here peas, lettuces, beans of several kinds, kale, celery, pine-apples, bananas, oranges, limes, lemons, with sweet potatoes and edibles of various other kinds whose names were strange to me.
The beef here is, in appearance, inferior to that of the North, although fed on the finest pastures in nature,—those of the Ohio and Kentucky, but injured by the neglect and ill feeding consequent upon a voyage of ten or twelve hundred miles in a crowded steam-boat.
The creole mutton, I should say, is equal to the best in this country, being small-boned, sweet, and very fat. The great disadvantage the artiste labours under is the not being able to keep the meat long enough to become quite tender; such is this climate that decomposition follows quickly on death, and here the man is buried or the mutton eaten without waiting until either becomes cold.
The Place d'Armes, near this market, is a large square, having an area enclosed with rails in the centre: here the Indians usually congregate, and within this a curious-looking group or two may commonly be found. To see the tribe at toilet is not a little amusing: some hair-hunting, catching and cracking this game, with a keen sporting look and an obvious relish of the pursuit quite varmint; others mixing red or white paint for the adornment of the nose, cheek, or eye, as custom or taste may decide.
I could not rightly discover whether these marks were simply directed by caprice, and assumed or laid aside at pleasure, or whether they were worn in compliance with some imperative custom, and having a translatable meaning, as some historians assert. Certain is it that I have noticed a little Choctaw belle, with whom I had established a sort of eye-flirtation of many days' standing; on one morning appealing to my taste by an insinuating streak of white lead over each of her bright eyes; on the next, giving my heart a stab from under a crimson half-moon; and on the third, killing me quite by a broadside from each chubby cheek, the right having at me with a ball of fiery red, the left exhibiting one of jet black.
The costume of these people, when divested of the eternal filthy blanket, is showy, and at times even becoming, and pleasing; bright colours, fringes, tags, beads, and feathers of the ostrich, parroquet, and eagle, constituted the raw material which the taste natural to the sex, and the love of finery inherent in the squaw, has to work upon.