Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians | Page 6

of ourselves, whose
government in speaking, by strict rules of grammar is essential, and
whom ignorance or contempt of those rules would betray into
solecisms in its use, which would attract unsparing criticism, and,
indeed, be fatal to his pretensions in this direction.

HIS PHYSICAL MIEN AND CHARACTERISTICS.
It will be interesting, perhaps, to notice the particulars, as to physical
conformation, in which the Indian differs from his white brother.
He maintains a higher average as to height, to fix which at five feet ten
would, I think, be a just estimate. It is rare, however, to find him attain
the exceptional stature, quite commonly observed with the white,
though, where he yields to the latter in this respect, there is
compensation for it in the way of greater breadth and compactness.
There are, of course, isolated cases, in which he is distinguished by as
great height as has ever been reached by ordinary man, and, in these
instances, I have never failed to notice that his form discloses almost
faultless proportions, the Indian being never ungainly or gaunt. I think,
on the whole, that I do no injustice to the white man, when I credit the
Indian with a better-knit frame than himself.
I am disposed to ascribe, in great measure, the evolving of the erect
form that the Indian, as a rule, possesses, to the custom in vogue of the
mother carrying her child strapped across the back, as well as to the
fact of her discouraging and interdicting any attempts at walking on the
part of the child, until the muscles shall have been so developed as to
justify such being made. To this practice, at least, I am safe in
attributing the rarity, if not the positive absence, with the Indian, of that
unhappy condition of bow-leggedness, of not too slight prevalence with
us, and which renders its victim often a butt for not very charitable or
approving comment.
The Indian is built more, perhaps, for fleetness than strength; and his
litheness and agility will come in, at another place, for their due
illustration, when treating of certain of his pastimes.
The Indian has a large head, high cheek bones, in general, large lips

and mouth; a contour of face inclining, on the whole, to undue breadth,
and lacking that pleasantly-rounded appearance so characteristic of the
white. He has usually a scant beard, his chin and cheeks seldom, if ever,
asserting that sturdy and bountiful growth of whisker and moustache, in
such esteem with adults among ourselves, and which they are so careful
to stimulate and insure. Indeed, it is said that the Indian holds rather in
contempt what we so complacently regard, and will often testify to his
scorn by plucking out the hairs which protrude, and would fain lend
themselves to his adornment.
The Indian, normally, has a stolid expression, redeemed slightly,
perhaps, by its exchange often for a lugubrious one. I should feel
disposed to predict for him the scoring of an immense success in the
personation of such characters as those of the melancholy Dane; or of
Antonio, in the Merchant of Venice, after the turn of the tide in his
fortunes, when the vengeful figure of the remorseless Shylock rests
upon his life to blight and to afflict it.
He is easily-moved to tears, though, perhaps, his facile transition from
the condition presented in the foregoing allusion, into a positively
lachrymose state, will be readily conceived of, without proclaiming
specially, the fact. He will maintain a mien, which shall consist
eminently with the atmosphere of the house of mourning; in truth, as an
efficient mourner, the Indian may be freely depended upon.
It is contended that the complexion of the Indian has had the tendency
to grow darker and darker, from his having inhabited smoky, bark
wigwams, and having held cleanliness in no very exceptional honor;
and the contention is sought to be made good by the citing of a case of
a young, fair-skinned boy, who, taking up with an Indian tribe, and
adopting in every particular their mode of life, developed by his
seventieth year a complexion as swarthy, and of as distinctively Indian
a hue, as that of any pure specimen of the race.
If we accept this as a sound view, which, however, carried to its logical
sequence, should have evolved, one would imagine, the negro out of
the Indian long are this, why may we not, in the way of argument,
fairly and legitimately provoked by the theory, look for and consider
the converse picture (now that the Indian lives in much the same
manner as the ordinary poor husbandman, and now that we have
certainly no warrant for imputing to him uncleanly habits) the gradual

approach in his complexion to the Anglo-Saxon type? If we entertain