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INDIAN COSTUME. 289 
mantles of strouding, according to their wealth 
or opportunities. Some of the northern tribes 
display considerable ingenuity and taste in 
the manufacture of moccasins. But this is 
the work of the women, who often embroider 
them with beads and colored porcupine quills, 
in a most beautiful manner. The kggin is 
a buckskin or cloth covering for the leg and 
thigh, as of the pantaloon. A superfluous list 
is usually left outside the seam, which, if of 
skin, is slitted into long tassels, or if of cloth, 
the wide border remains entire, to dangle and 
flap upon the exterior of the legs. A strip of 
strouding (that is, coarse broad-cloth) about a 
foot in width and a yard or more long, con- 
stitutes the most usual flap; which bein ing 
passed betwixt the legs, the ends are secure 
under the belt around the waist, whence the 
leggins are suspended. As the flap i is some- 
times near two yards long, a surplusage of 
half a yard or more at each end is sometimes 
left dangling down before and behind. 
e Indians use no head-dress, but support 
the bleakest rains and hottest suns of those 
bare plains with naked heads. Nevertheless, 
their coarse black hair seems ‘fertilized’ by 
exposure ; for they rarely become gray till an 
exceeding old age; an o not recollect to 
have ever seen a bald Indian. Their eye- 
sight also, they retain in extraordinary vigor, 
notwithstanding the want of protection even 
of the eye-lashes and brows (which are pluck- 
ed out), and in spite of the constant use of 
apparently deleterious paints around the edges 
25 
