IDEA OP THEIR OWN SUPERIORITY. 99 



■women are short, with crooked legs, and are obliged to crop their hair 

 close to their heads. They wear, in addition to the leggins and mocca- 

 sins, a skirt of dressed deerskin. They also tattoo their faces and 

 breasts, and are far from being as good looking as the men. . 



Notwithstanding that these people are hospitable and kind to stran- 

 gers, and apparently amiable in their dispositions, yet, when a warrior 

 conceives himself injured, his thirst for revenge knows no satiety. 

 Grave and dignified in his deportment, and priding himself upon his 

 coolness of temper and the control of his passions, yet, when once pro- 

 voked, he, like the majority of his race, is implacable and unrelenting; 

 an affront is laid up and cherished in his breast, and nothing can efface 

 it from his mind until ample reparation has been made. He has no idea 

 of forgiveness : the insult must be atoned for by blood. With many 

 tribes, quarrels can often be settled by presents to the injured party; 

 but with the Comanches, their law of equity is of such a character that 

 no reconciliation can take place until the reproach is wiped out with the 

 blood of their enemy. They make no use of money except for orna- 

 ments. Like other tribes, they are fond of decking themselves with 

 paint, beads, and feathers ; and the young warrior often spends more 

 time at his toilet than the most conceited coxcomb that can be found in 

 civilized life. Bright red and blue are their favorite colors ; and ver- 

 milion is an important article in the stock of goods of one of their 

 traders. This they always carry about their persons ; and whenever 

 they expect to meet strangers, they always (provided they have time) 

 make their toilet with care, and paint their faces. Some few of their 

 chiefs who have visited their Great Father at Washington, have returned 

 strongly impressed with the numerical power and prosperity of the 

 whites ; but the great majority of them being entirely ignorant of every- 

 thing that relates to us, and the most of them having never even seen a 

 white man, believe the Comanches to be the most powerful nation in 

 existence ; and the relation of facts which conflict with this notion, by 

 their own people, to the masses of the tribes at their prairie firesides, 

 only subjects the narrator to ridicule, and he is set down as one whose 

 brain has been turned by the necromancy of the pale-faces, and is 

 thenceforth regarded as wholly unworthy of confidence. 



Having upon one occasion a Delaware and a Comanche with me in 

 the capacity of guides, I was much diverted with a conversation which 

 passed between them in my presence, and which was interpreted to me 

 by the Delaware. It appeared that the latter had stated to the other 

 the fact of the sphericity of the earth's surface. I his idea being altogether 

 new and incomprehensible to the Comanche, was received with much 



