146 Dr Morton on the Distinctive Characteristics of the 
2. Moral Traits. These are, perhaps, as strongly marked 
as the physical characteristics of which we have just spoken ; 
but they have been so often the subject of analysis as to 
claim only a passing notice on the present occasion. Among 
the most prominent of this series of mental operations is a 
sleepless caution, an untiring vigilance, which presides over 
every action and masks every motive. The Indian says 
nothing and does nothing without its influence: it enables 
him to deceive others without being himself suspected ; it 
causes that proverbial taciturnity among strangers which 
changes to garrulity among the people of his own tribe; and 
it is the basis of that invincible firmness which teaches him 
to contend unrepiningly with every adverse circumstance, 
and even with death in its most hideous forms. 
The love of war is so general, so characteristic, that it 
scarcely calls for a comment or an illustration. One nation 
is in almost perpetual hostility with another, tribe against 
tribe, man against man; and with this ruling passion are 
linked a merciless revenge, and an unsparing destructiveness. 
The Chickasaws have been known to make a stealthy march 
of six hundred miles from their own hunting grounds, for the 
sole purpose of destroying an encampment of their enemies. 
The small island of Nantucket, which contains but a few 
square miles of barren sand, was inhabited at the advent of 
the European colonies by two Indian tribes, who sometimes 
engaged in hot and deadly feud with each other. But what 
is yet more remarkable, the miserable natives of Terra de} 
Fuego, whose common privations have linked them for a time 
in peace and fellowship, become suddenly excited by the 
same inherent ferocity, and exerted their puny efforts for 
mutual destruction. Of the destructive propensity of the 
Indian, which has long become a proverb, it is almost un- 
necessary to speak ; but we may advert to a forcible example 
from the narrative of the traveller Hearne, who accompanied 
a trading party of northern Indians on a long journey ; dur- 
ing which he declares that they killed every living creature 
that came within their reach; nor could they even pass a 
bird’s nest without slaying the young or destroying the eggs. 
That philosophic traveller, Dr Von Martius, gives a 
