NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 515 



that hospitality and even good breeding could dictate. The 

 kindly offices of drying and mending our clothes, cooking our 

 provisions, and thawing snow for our drink, were performed 

 by the women with an obliging cheerfulness which we shall 

 not easily forget, and which commanded its due share of our 

 admiration and esteem. While thus their guest, I have passed 

 an evening not only with comfort, but with extreme gratifica- 

 tion ; for, with the women working and singing, their husbands 

 quietly mending their lines, the children playing before the 

 door, and the pot boiling over the blaze of a cheerful lamp, 

 one might well forget for the time that an Esquimaux hut 

 was the scene of this domestic comfort and tranquillity ; and 

 I can safely affirm with Cartwright that, while thus lodged 

 beneath their roof, I know no people whom I would more 

 confidently trust, as respects either my person or my property, 

 than the Esquimaux."* 



Dr. Eae also has a very high opinion of them, and they 

 seem from all accounts to present the remarkable pheno-- 

 menon of a really high state of morality, without anything 

 which can be called religion. 



The North American Indians. 



The aboriginal, or at least the pre-Columbian inhabitants 

 of North America, fall naturally into three divisions. The 

 Esquimaux in the extreme north, the Indian tribes in the 

 centre, and the comparatively civilized Mexicans in the south' 

 The central tribes, which occupied by far the greater extent 

 of the continent, were again divided by the Rocky Mountains 

 into two great groups ; that on the western side being in much 

 the most abject condition. Though no doubt there was and 

 is an immense difference between different tribes and parti- 

 cularly between the semi-agricultural nations of the west, and 



* Parry's Three Voyages for the Discovery of a North-west Passage, 

 vol. v. p. 13. 



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