102 DIET OF THE COMANCHE S. 



tions along the Mexican borders. During the past year they have also 

 been hostile towards the Delawares and Shawnees, and have killed 

 several individuals who have been into their country in small parties. 

 The Creek Indians, who exercise a good influence over the prairie tribes, 

 have counselled them to commit no further acts of hostility upon these 

 Indians, and I presume they will take measures to enforce a strict adhe- 

 rence to their "wishes in this respect. These people, who are so extremely 

 jealous of their own freedom that they will often commit suicide rather 

 than be taken prisoners, are the more prone to enslave others, and this 

 dominant principle is carried to the greatest extreme so far as regards 

 their women. A beast of burden and a slave to the will of her brutal 

 master, yet, strange as it may appear, the Comanche woman seems con- 

 tented with her lot, and submits to her fate without a murmur. The 

 hardships imposed upon the females are most severe and cruel. The 

 distance of rank and consideration which exists between the black slave 

 and his master is not greater than between the Comanche warrior and 

 his wife. Every degrading office that is imposed upon the black by the 

 most tyrannical master, falls, among the Comanches, to the lot of the 

 wretched female. They, in common with other Indians, are not a pro- 

 lific race ; indeed, it is seldom that a woman has more than three or 

 four children. Many of these, owing to unavoidable exposure, die young ; 

 the boys, however, are nurtured with care and treated with great kind- 

 ness by their mothers, while the girls are frequently beaten and abused 

 unmercifully. I have never seen an idiot, or one that was naturally 

 deformed, among them. 



Of all the Indians I had before encountered, there were none who had 

 not an extreme fondness for spirituous liquors. The prairie tribes that 

 I have seen, say the taste of such liquor is not pleasant ; that it makes 

 fools of them, and that they do not desire it. If there are exceptions 

 to this, I think they may be set down as factitious rather than natural ; 

 the appetite having been created by occasional indulgence in the use of 

 a little at a time. 



The diet of these people is very simple ; from infancy to old age their 

 only food, with the exception of a few wild plants which they find on 

 the prairies, is fresh meat, of which, in times of plenty, they consume 

 enormous quantities. In common with many other tribes, they can, 

 when necessity demands it, abstain from eating for several days without 

 inconvenience, and they are enabled to make up at one meal the defi- 

 ciency. All of them are extravagantly fond of tobacco, which they use 

 for smoking, mixed with the dried leaves of the sumach, inhaling the 

 smoke into their lungs and giving it out though their nostrils. Their 



