THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 529 



and also when indoors, and free from those causes, subjected generally to one more 

 •distressing and calculated to produce similar results, the smoke that almost continu- 

 ally hangs about their wigwams, which necessarily contracts the lids of the eyes, for- 

 bidding that full flame and expansion of the eye that the cool and clear shades of our 

 civilized domiciles are calculated to promote. 



The teeth of the Indians are generally regular and sound, and wonderfully preserved 

 to old age, o^ing, no doubt, to the fact that they live without the spices of life, with- 

 out saccharine, and without salt, which are equally destructive to teeth in civilized 

 communities. Their teeth, though sound, are not white, having a yellowish cast; 

 but for the same reason that a negro's teeth are like ivory, they look white, set as 

 they are in bronze, as any one with a tolerable set of teeth can easily test by painting 

 his face the color of an Indian and grinning for a moment in his looking-glass. 



HOW THEY AVOID BEARDS. 



Beards they generally have not, esteeming them great vulgarities, and using every 

 possible means to eradicate them whenever they are so unfortunate as to be annoyed 

 with them. Different writers have been very much at variance on this subject ever 

 since the first accounts given of these people, and there seems still an unsatisfied 

 curiosity on the subject, which I would be glad to say that I could put entirely at rest. 



From the best information that I could obtain amongst forty-eight tribes that I 

 have visited, I feel authorized to say that amongst the wild tribes, where they have 

 made no efforts to imitate white men, at least the proportion of eighteen out of 

 twenty by nature are entirely without the appearance of a beard ; and of the very 

 lew who have them by nature, nineteen out of twenty eradicate it by plucking it out 

 several times in succession, precisely at the age of puberty, when its- growth is suc- 

 oessftiUy arrested; and occasionally one may be seen who has omitted to destroy it 

 at that time, and subjects his chin to the repeated pains of its extractions, which he 

 is performing with a pair of clam-shells or other tweezers nearly every day of his 

 life; and occasionally again, but still more rarely, one is found who, from careless- 

 ness or inclination, has omitted both of these, and is allowing it to grow to the length 

 -of an inch or two on his chin, in which case it is generally very soft and exceedingly 

 sparse. Wherever there is a cross of the blood with the European or African, which 

 is frequently the case along the frontier, a proportionate beard is the result ; and it 

 is allowed to grow or is plucked out with much toil and with great pain. 



HALF-BREEDS A DETERIORATED RACE. 



There has been much speculation and great variety of opinions as to the results of 

 the intercourse between the European and African population with the Indians on 

 the borders, and I would not undertake to decide so difficult a question, though I 

 ©annot help but express my opinion, which is made up from the vast many instances 

 that I have seen, that, generally speaking, these half-breed specimens are in both in- 

 stances a decided deterioration from the two stocks from which they have sprang, 

 which I grant may be the consequence that generally flows from illicit intercourse, 

 and from the inferior rank in which they are held by both (which is mostly confined 

 to the lowest and most degraded portious of society), rather than from any constitu- 

 tional objection necessarily growing out of the amalgamation. 



INDIANS AND NEGROES FINE SPECIMENS OF MEN PHYSICALLY. 



The'finest built and most powerful men that I have ever yet seen have been some of 

 the last-mentioned, the negro and the North American Indian mixed, of equal blood. 

 These instances are rare, to be sure, yet are occasionally to be found amongst the Sem- 

 inolees and Cherokees, and also amongst the Camancheeseven and theCaddoes; and 

 I account for it in this way : From the slave-holding States to the heart of the country 

 of a wild tribe of Indians, through almost boundless and impassable wilds and swamps, 

 for hundreds of miles, it requires a negro of extraordinary leg and courage and perse- 

 verance to travel, absconding from his master's fields to throw himself into a tribe 

 G744 34 



