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are their religions, their discipline, and their standards of opinion, in most respects, from ours, in the main they have much the same notion of a great, respectable, and good man that we have. If we mark the universal passion for military display among our own race, and observe what place is assigned by common feeling, as well as history, to military prowess, we shall hardly consider it a striking difference from our nature, that bravery, and contempt of death, and reckless daring command the first place in their homage. But, apart from these views, the same traits of character that entitle a man to the appellation of virtuous and good, and that insure respect among us, have much the same bearing upon the estimation of the Indians. In conversing with them, we are struck with surprise, to observe how widely and deeply the obligations of truth, constancy, honor, generosity, and forbearance are felt and understood among them.
6. As regards their vanity, we have not often had the fortune to contemplate a young squaw at her toilet; but, from the studied arrangement of her calico jacket, from the glaring circles of vermilion on her plump and circular face, from the artificial manner in which her hair, of intense black, is clubbed in a coil of the thickness of a man's wrist, from the long time it takes her to complete these arrangements, from the manner in which she minces and ambles, and plays off her prettiest airs after she has put on all her charms, we should clearly infer that dress and personal ornament occupy the same portion of her thoughts that they do of the fashionable woman of civilized society. In regions contiguous to the whites, the squaws have generally a calico shirt of the finest colors.
7. A young Indian warrior is notoriously the most thoroughgoing beau in the world. Bond Street and Broad
way furnish no subjects that will undergo as much crimping and confinement to appear in full dress. We are confident that we have observed such a character constantly occupied with his paints and his pocket glass three full hours, laying on his colors and arranging his tresses, and contemplating, from time to time, with visible satisfaction, the progress of his growing attractions. When he has finished, the proud triumph of irresistible charms is in his eye.
The chiefs and warriors, in full dress, háve one, two, or three broad clasps of silver about their arms; generally jewels in their ears and often in their noses; and nothing is more common than to see a thin, circular piece of silver, of the size of a dollar, depending from the nose, a little below the upper lip.
8. Nothing shows more clearly the influence of fashion; this ornament, so painfully inconvenient as it evidently is to them, and so horridly ugly and disfiguring, seems to be the utmost finish of Indian taste. Painted porcupine quills are twisted in their hair. Tails of animals hang from their hair behind. A necklace of bear's or alligator's teeth, or of claws of the bald eagle, hangs loosely down, with an interior and smaller circle of large red beads; or, in default of them, a rosary of red hawthorns surrounds the neck. From the knees to the feet, the legs are ornamented with great numbers of little, perforated, cylindrical pieces of silver or brass, that emit a simultaneous tinkle as the person walks.
If to all this he add an American hat, and a soldier's coat of blue, faced with red, over the customary calico shirt of the gaudiest colors that can be found, he lifts his feet high, and steps firmly on the ground, to give his tinklers a uniform and full sound, and apparently considers his appearance with as much complacency as the human bosom can be supposed to feel.
This is a very
curtailed view of an Indian beau, but every reader competent to judge will admit its fidelity, as far as it goes, to the description of a young Indian warrior when prepared to take part in a public dance.
IV. MORALS OF THE HOMERIC AGE
1. The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from the low, is educated under tutors in reverence for his parents and in desire to emulate their fame. He shares in manly and in graceful sports; acquires the use of arms; hardens himself in the pursuit of all others the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild beasts; and gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many-sided intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plow firm and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn.
2. And, when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe, takes part in its government, learns by direct instruction and by practice how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive power in political assemblies, attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For, all this time, he has been in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who have known him from infancy on his father's domain.
3. He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of the strong hand. Human life is cheap; so cheap that even a mild and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a