INDIAN BUCKS. 227 



of the eyelids dark brown or black, and the cheeks heavily 

 rouged with native red oxide of iron, and the married 

 ladies were distinguished from the maids by five narrow 

 parallel blue bars, tattooed in straight lines from the 

 under lip to the chin ; while all of them, married and 

 single, wore armlets, bracelets, anklets, and necklaces in 

 profusion. I had nearly forgotten to mention, the young 

 women's hands were very pretty and well shaped, and 

 the most elaborately got up among them had their finger- 

 nails coloured red. 



The children were dressed principally in well, next 

 to nothing ! That primitive arrangement, invariably and 

 always worn by all American savages, irrespective of 

 tribe, age, or sex, consisting of a string round the waist, 

 met at right angles by a very narrow strip of cotton- 

 cloth, softly-dressed skin, or inner bark of a tree, which 

 is called by the whites "the breech-clout," being all they 

 had on. 



The bucks were arrayed in good hunting moccasins, 

 fringed leggings extending half-way up their thighs, buck- 

 skin hunting-shirts reaching down nearly to the tops of 

 their leggings, and serapes, or Mexican striped blankets. 

 Their hair was dressed like the women's, except that the 

 side locks were looped up, and the back hair twisted into 

 what our grandmothers called a Grecian knot. They 

 each wore on their left wrist a wide guard-bracelet of 

 ornamented raw hide, to serve as a protection from the 

 jar of the bowstring; and some of them had on robes 

 of dressed puma or bear skins. Necklaces of the claws 

 of those animals were not rare. One of the braves sported 



Q 2 



