628 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



are evidently below it, allowing their average to be about equal to that of their fel- 

 low-men in the civilized world. In girth they are less, and lighter in their limbs and 

 almost entirely free from corpulency or useless flesh ; their bones are lighter, their 

 skulls are thinner, and their muscles less hard than those of their civilized neighbors, 

 excepting in the legs and feet, where they are brought into more continual action by 

 their violent exercise on foot and on horseback, which swells the muscles and gives 

 them great strength in those limbs, which is often quite as conspicuous as the extra- 

 ordinary development of muscles in the shoulders and arms of our laboring men. 



THEIR FORM. 



Although the Indians are generally narrow iu the shoulders and less powerful with 

 the arms, yet it does not always happen, by any means, that they are so effeminate 

 as they look, and so widely inferior in brachial strength as the spectator is apt to 

 believe from the smooth and rounded appearance of their limbs. The contrast be- 

 tween one of our laboring men when he denudes his limbs and the figure of a naked 

 Indian is, to be sure, very striking, and entirely too much so for the actual difference 

 in the power of the two persons. There are several reasons for this, which accounts 

 for so disproportionate a contrast, and should be named. 



THEIR STRENGTH. 



The laboring man, who is using his limbs the greater part of his life in lifting 

 heavy weights, &c., sweats them with the weight of clothes which he has on him, 

 which softens the integuments and the flesh, leaving the muscles to stand out in more 

 conspicuous relief when they are exposed ; whilst the Indian, who exercises his limbs 

 for the most of his life denuded and exposed to the air, gets over his muscles a thicker 

 and more compact layer of integuments, which hide them from the view, leaving the 

 casual spectator who sees them only at rest to suppose them too decidedly inferior to 

 those which are found amongst people of his own color. Of muscular strength in 

 the legs I have met many of the most extraordinary instances in the Indian country 

 that ever I have seen in my life, and I have watched and studied such for hours to- 

 gether, with utter surprise and admiration, in the violent exertions of their dances, 

 where they leap and jump with every nerve strung and every muscle swelled, till 

 their legs will often look like a bundle of ropes rather than a mass of human flesh. 

 And from all that I have seen I am inclined to say that whatever differences there 

 may be between the North America Indians and their civilized neighbors in the above 

 respects, they are decidedly the results of different habits of life and modes of educa- 

 tion rather than of any difference in constitution. And I would also venture the as- 

 sertion that he who would see the Indian in a condition to judge of his muscles must 

 see him in motion ; and he who would get a perfect study for an Hercules or an Atlas 

 should take a stone-mason for the upper part of his figure and a Camanchee or a 

 Blackfoot Indian from the waist downwards to the feet. 



FEATURES ; EYES, NOSE, AND TEETH. 



There is a general and striking character in the facial outline of the North Ameri- 

 can Indians, which is bold and free, and would seem at once to stamp them as distinct 

 from natives of other parts of the world. Their neses are generally prominent and 

 aquiline, and the whole face, if divested of paint and of copper-color, would seem to 

 approach to the bold and European character. Many travelers have thought that 

 their eyes were smaller than those of Europeans ; and there is good cause for one to 

 believe so if he judges from first impressions, without taking pains to inquire into 

 the truth and causes of things. I have been struck, as most travelers no doubt have, 

 with the want of expansion and apparent smallness of the Indians' eyes, which I have 

 found npon examination to be principally the effect of continual exposure to the rays 

 of the sun and the wind, without the shields that are used by the civilized world, 



