warrior. We can hardly suppress a feeling of regret that so much wild romance
should have been swept off the earth, unless we bring our minds to dwell upon
the deep dark shades of the picture, on their cruelty, perfidiousness, and lust.
Even then our humanity revolts from the treatment they have received at the
hands of the white man. Hunted from place to place like wild beasts, driven back
from one hunting-ground to another, brutalised by misery or drunkenness,
decimated by the diseases of civilisation, incapable of labour, the Red Skins
have struggled in vain against the irresistible onward movement of a civilisation
without bowels; a civilisation ill-adapted to attract and persuade them, and more
anxious to destroy than to assimilate.
The treatment of the Indians is a dark chapter in the history of the United States.
The great nations which were formerly the valued allies or dreaded enemies of
the European settlers, the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Natchez, the
Leni-Lenapes, have entirely disappeared. The wrecks of other but less important
tribes still linger on the shores of the great Northern lakes, in the woods and
wildernesses of the Far West, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, in Texas, in
Arkansas, in California, and in the northern provinces and deserts of Mexico.
Such are the Sioux, the Dacotahs, the Flatheads, the Big-Bellies, the Blackfoot,
the Apaches, the Comanches. The two latter people have been the most
successful in preserving their vitality. Their characteristics however are very
diverse. The Comanches are of a mild gentle nature, and eager to live on
peaceable terms with the whites. The Apaches, on the other hand, have vowed a
relentless hatred against the Pale Faces; they are the terror of the hacienderos (or
farm proprietors) and gold seekers of Upper Mexico, and the American journals
to this day are full of their incursions, and their acts of cruelty and brigandage.
Physiologically, the distinctive features of the Red Men are, in addition to the
colour of their skin and the pyramidal form of the head, the prominency and
arched outline of the nose, the width of the nasal apertures, corresponding to a
remarkable development of the olfactory nerve, and the absence of beard.
The superstitions, or religious customs, of the Red Men are in themselves a
sufficiently interesting subject of study. We begin with an account of the
ceremony through which every one of their youths has to pass before he is
acknowledged to have entered upon manhood. Our knowledge of it is due to Mr.
Catlin, who, as a reputed “medicine-man,” lived for some time with the Mandan
tribe, and became acquainted with their most secret customs.
The object of this rite, which for savage cruelty seems unparalleled, is, first, to