THE INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST. 237 



The habit of plucking the hair from the face and body obtains among 

 the younger men, but the older ones suffer it to grow and wear a scanty 

 beard and mustache, never however attaining any considerable length. 

 Amongst the latter, also, long years of service in canoes has impaired 

 their powers of locomotion and misshapen their legs, rendering them 

 decidedly awkward on shore. This, by comparison, gives the body a 

 long and large appearance. The head appears unusually large, due 

 both to a real disproportion and to the mass of bushy hair and the high 

 cheek-bones of the men. Their noses are less flat and fleshy than those 

 of the Indians to the south. The teeth are white and fine, but in old 

 age are much discolored and worn. The wearing down of the teeth 

 comes from eating dried salmon on which sand and grit have been blown 

 during the process of drying. The hands and feet are small and well 

 shaped, especially amongst the women. As they all go barefooted a 

 greater part of the year, their feet are callous, excoriated, and wrinkled 

 by exposure. The women are comely and fine looking in youth and in 

 early bloom usually have rosy cheeks. In complexion both sexes are 

 surprisingly light colored. This is in no way due to intermixture with 

 whites. Dixon (1787) says that they were "very little darker than the 

 Europeans in general.* Langsdorfl" makes the same statement.! The 

 Haida are markedly fairer skinned than the others, but still the dark 

 tinge is quite apparent, and ex^Dosure always adds to it. 



The habit of frequent bathing in both winter and summer hardens 

 their physique. As soon as a child is able to leave its cradle it is bathed 

 in the ocean every day without regard to season, and this custom is kept 

 up by both sexes through life. This, with scant wrappings, kills off the 

 sickly children, and hardens the survivors.^ The scanty clothing worn 

 by the men, their reckless exposure in all kinds of weather, and their 

 ignorance of hygienic laws of ventilation and sanitation in their dwell- 

 ings, bring in their train a long series of ills. 



They are not particularly long-lived, although grey -haired people 

 are not uncommon. Eheumatism and pulmonary diseases are their 

 worst ills. Small-pox has ravaged the coast terribly. First intro- 

 duced amongst the Tlingit by the Spaniards in 1775,§ it worked its 

 way down the coast, breaking out from time to time in later years, de- 

 populating villages and proving a fatal scourge to the natives of this 

 region. No one thing contributed more to dishearten and subjugate 

 these Indians than the ravages made by this fell disease. 



Weak eyes and blindness are aue to exposure and to the smoke of 

 camp and household fires. Debauchery by bad alcohol, worse whisky, 

 and the native " hoochinoo" has added its quota to the physical misfor- 

 tunes of the Indians, while venereal diseases are extremely destruc- 

 tive. 



* Dixou, Voyages, p. 238. 



t Langsdorff, Voyages, Fart ii, p. 112. 



t Laugsdoiff, Voyages, Part xi., pp. 112, U3, and 135, 



^ Portlocl?, Voyage (1787), p. 271, 



