TREATMENT OF PRISONERS. 103 



language is verbal and pantomimic. The former consists of a very 

 limited number of words — some of which are common to all the prairie 

 tribes. The latter, which is exceedingly graceful and expressive, is the 

 court language of the plains, and is used and understood with great 

 facility and accuracy by all the tribes from the Gila to the Columbia ; 

 the motions and signs to express ideas being common to all. In con- 

 templating the character of the prairie Indian, and the striking simi- 

 larity between him and the Arab and Tartar, we are not less astonished 

 at the absolute dissimilarity between these and the aboriginal inhabit- 

 ants of the Eastern States. The latter, from the time of the discovery 

 of the country, lived in permanent villages, where they cultivated fields 

 •f corn, and possessed strong attachment for their ancestral abodes and 

 sepulchres : they did not use horses, but always made their hunting and 

 war expeditions on foot, and sought the cover of trees on going into 

 battle ; while the former have no permanent abiding-places, never culti- 

 vate the soil, are always mounted, and never fight a battle except in the 

 open prairie, where they charge boldly up to an enemy, discharge their 

 arrows with great rapidity, and are ' away before their panic-stricken 

 antagonist can prepare to resist or retaliate. In their treatment of pris- 

 oners of war there was also a very marked difference. The eastern 

 tribes, although they put their prisoners to tortures of the most appall- 

 ing character, seldom, if ever, violate the chastity of the females ; while, 

 on the contrary, the prairie Indians do not put their prisoners to death 

 by prolonged tortures, but invariably compel the females to submit to 

 their lewd embraces. There is at this time a white woman among the 

 Middle Comanches, by the name of Parker, who, with her brother, wt-.s 

 captured while they were young children, from their father's house in 

 the western part of Texas. This woman has adopted all the habits and 

 peculiarities of the Comanches ; has an Indian husband and children, 

 and cannot be persuaded to leave them. The brother of the woman, 

 who had been ransomed by a trader and brought home to his relatives, 

 was sent back by his mother for the purpose of endeavoring to prevail 

 upon his sister to leave the Indians and return to her family ; but he 

 stated to me that on his arrival she refused to listen to the proposition, 

 saying that her husband, children, and all that she held most dear, were 

 with the Indians, and there she should remain. As the prairie Indians 

 depend almost entirely on the buffalo for a subsistence and for clothing, 

 it becomes a question of much interest, what will be the fate of these 

 people when these animals shall have become extinct ? Formerly, buffa- 

 loes were found in countless herds over almost the entire northern con- 

 tinent of America, from the 28 th to the 50 th degree of north latitude, 



