Even then our humanity revolts from the treatment to which he has been subjected by the "white man." Tracked and hunted like wild beasts, driven back from one hunting-ground to another, embruted by misery or drunkenness, incapable of labour, the poor Indians have vainly struggled against the all-devouring influence of a civilization without bowels, ill adapted to attract and persuade them, and far less solicitous to assimilate than to destroy them. The great nations which were formerly the valued allies or dreaded enemies of the European settlers, the Hurons, Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Natchez, the Leni-Lenapes, have entirely disappeared. The wrecks of other but less important nations still exist on the shores of the great northern lakes, in the Far West, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, in California, in Texas, in Arkansas, 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, above all, preserved a certain vitality. Their characteristics, it is said, 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 contrary, have vowed a relentless hatred against the Pale Faces; they are the terror of the _hacienderos_[188] and gold-seekers of Upper Mexico, and the American journals frequently contain accounts of their incursions, their acts of brigandage, and cruelty. [Illustration: INDIAN WOMEN OF NORTH AMERICA.] The most characteristic features of the Red Skin type are, in addition to the colour of the skin and the pyramidal form of the head, the prominency and arched outline of the nose, the greatness of the nasal openings, corresponding to a singular development of the olfactory nerve, and the absence of beard. Several tribes subject the head of the new-born to a systematic mis-shapement by compressing it. Hence has arisen the nickname of Flat-heads, popularly bestowed on the Choctaws. The same custom existed among the Atacapas, the Creeks, the Muskogis, and the Catawhas, and is found among most tribes of the Californian stock. [Illustration: THE APACHES ATTACKING AN EMIGRANT TRAIN.] The peoples who have alternately dominated in Mexico and Central America, and who are now in great part destroyed--the Chichinequas, the Toltequas, and the Aztecs--are allied to the Red Man by their physical peculiarities as well as by their moral characteristics. The comparatively advanced civilization which the Spanish conquerors found established in Mexico had not effaced among the Indians the sanguinary instincts and vindictive propensities of their savage ancestors. The race, or rather races which people South America are very far from offering the same homogeneity as the populations of North America. These races are four in number, each of which may be subdivided into several distinct branches.