Displaying their Love to their Country—Their Martial 405 Spirit—Their Caution in War—Method of Fighting—Barbarity to their Captives—Instances of their Fortitude and Magnanimity in the View of Death—Their Reward of Public Services—The Manner of Crowning their Warriors After Victory—Their Games—Method of Fishing, and of Building—Their Utensils and Manufactures—Conduct of Domestic Life—Their Laws, Form of Government, etc., etc. APPENDIX CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION OF THE FLORIDAS, THE MISSISSIPPI 481 LANDS, WITH THEIR PRODUCTIONS—THE BENEFITS OF COLONIZING GEORGIANA, AND CIVILIZING THE INDIANS—AND THE WAY TO MAKE ALL THE COLONIES MORE VALUABLE TO THE MOTHER COUNTRY A HISTORY OF THE NORTH-AMERICAN INDIANS, THEIR CUSTOMS, &c. _Observations on the colour, shape, temper, and dress of the Indians of America._ The Indians are of a copper or red-clay colour—and they delight in every thing, which they imagine may promote and increase it: accordingly, they paint their faces with vermilion, as the best and most beautiful ingredient. If we consider the common laws of nature and providence, we shall not be surprized at this custom; for every thing loves best its own likeness and place in the creation, and is disposed to ridicule its opposite. If a deformed son of burning Africa, was to paint the devil, he would not do it in black colours, nor delineate him with a shagged coarse woolly head, nor with thick lips, a short flat nose, or clumsy feet, like those of a bear: his devil would represent one of a different nation or people. But was he to draw an agreeable picture,—according to the African taste, he would daub it all over with sooty black. All the Indians are so strongly attached to, and prejudiced in favour of, their own colour, that they think as meanly of the whites, as we possibly can do of them. The English traders among them, experience much of it, and are often very glad to be allowed to pass muster with the Indian chieftains, as fellow-brethren {1} of the human species. One instance will sufficiently shew in what flattering glasses they view themselves. Some time past, a large body of the English Indian traders, on their way to the _Choktah_ country, were escorted by a body of Creek and Choktah warriors. The Creeks having a particular friendship for some of the traders, who had treated them pretty liberally, took this opportunity to chide the Choktahs, before the traders, in a smart though friendly way, for not allowing to the English the name of human creatures:—for the general name they give us in their most favourable _war-speeches_, resembles that of a contemptible, heterogeneous animal.