WHAT I shall first take notice of in the persons of the Indians, is the colour of their skins, which, in fact, constitutes the most striking distinction between their persons and ours. In general their skin is of a copper cast; but a most wonderful difference of colour is observable amongst them; some, in whose veins there is no reason to think that any other than Indian blood flows, not having darker complexions than natives of the south of France or of Spain, whilst others, on the contrary, are nearly as black as negroes. Many persons, and particularly some of the most respectable of the French missionaries, whose long residence amongst the Indians ought to have made them competent judges of the matter, have been of opinion, that their natural colour does not vary from ours; and that the darkness of their complexion arises wholly from their anointing themselves so frequently with unctuous substances, and from their exposing themselves so much to the smoke of wood fires, and to the burning rays of the sun. But although it is certain that they think a dark complexion very becoming; that they take great pains from their earliest age to acquire such an one; and that many of them do, in process of time, contrive to vary their original colour very considerably; although it is certain likewise, that when first born their colour differs but little from ours; yet it appears evident to me, that the greater part of them are indebted for their different hues to nature alone. I have been induced to form this opinion from the following consideration, namely; that those children which are born of parents of a dark colour are almost universally of the same dark cast as those from whom they sprang. Nekig, that is, The Little Otter, an Ottoway chief of great notoriety, whose village is on Detroit River, and with whom we have become intimately acquainted, has a complexion that differs but little from that of an African; and his little boys, who are the very image of the father, are just as black as himself. With regard to Indian children being white on their first coming into the world, it ought by no means to be concluded from thence, that they would remain so if their mothers did not bedaub them with grease, herbs, &c. as it is well known that negro children are not perfectly black when born, nor indeed for many months afterwards, but that they acquire their jetty hue gradually, on being exposed to the air and sun, just as in the vegetable world the tender blade, on first peeping above ground, turns from white to a pale greenish colour, and afterwards to a deeper green.