Sketches of Indian Character: Being a Brief Survey of the Principal Features of Character Exhibited by the North American Indians; Illustrating the Aphorism of the Socialists, that "Man is the creature of circumstances"Bailey, James Napier
Philosophy
Sketches of Indian Character: Being a Brief Survey of the Principal Features of Character Exhibited by the North American Indians; Illustrating the Aphorism of the Socialists, that "Man is the creature of circumstances"
Bailey, James Napier
Indians of North America
“They formerly wore shirts made of dressed deer-skins for their summer
visiting dress; but their winter hunting clothes were long and shaggy,
made of the skins of panthers, bucks, bears, beavers, and otters; the
fleshly side outwards, sometimes doubled, and always softened like
velvet cloth, though they retained their fur and hair. The needles and
thread they used formerly, (and now at times) were fish bones, or the
horns and bones of deer, rubbed sharp, and deer’s sinews, and a sort of
hemp that grows among them spontaneously, in rich open lands. The women’s
dress consists only in a broad softened skin, or several small skins
sewed together, which they wrap and tie round their waist, reaching a
little below their knees: in cold weather they wrap themselves in the
softened skins of buffalo calves, with the wintery shagged wool inward,
never forgetting to anoint and tie up their hair except in their time of
mourning. The men wear for ornament and for the convenience of hunting,
thin deer skin boots well smoked, that reach so high up their thighs, as
with their jackets to secure them from the brambles and braky thickets.
They sew them about five inches from the edges, which are formed into
tassels, to which they fasten fawn’s trotters and small pieces of
tinkling metal, or wild turkey cock’s spurs. The Braves used to fasten
the like to their warpipes, with the addition of a piece of an enemy’s
scalp, with a tuft of long hair hanging down from the middle of the stem,
each of them painted red: and they still observe that old custom, only
they choose bell buttons to give a greater sound.
“The young Indian men and women, through a fondness of their ancient
dress, wrap a piece of cloth round them, that has a near resemblance to
the Roman toga, or prætexta. It is about a fathom square, bordered seven
or eight quarters deep, to make a shining cavalier of the _Beau Monde_,
and to keep out both heat and cold. With this frantic apparel the red
heroes swaddle themselves, when they are waddling whooping and prancing
it away around the reputed holy fire. In a sweating condition they will
thus incommode themselves frequently for a whole night, actuated by the
same principle of pride which actuates the Spaniard to wear his winter
cloak in summer.…
“They make their shoes for common use, out of the skins of the bear
and elk, well dressed and smoked to prevent hardening; and those for
ornament, out of deer-skins, done in the like manner: but they chiefly
go bare-footed, and always bare-headed. The men fasten several different
sorts off beautiful feathers, frequently in tufts, or the wing of a red
bird, or the skin of a small hawk, to a lock of hair on the crown of
their heads. And every different nation when at war, trim their hair
after a different manner, through contempt of each other; thus they can
distinguish an enemy in the woods so far off as they can see him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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