222 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



absolutely disappeared, that the remaining Indians have mixed ex- 

 tensively with representatives of other races, and that their mentality 

 has been subjected to more far-reaching influences still, I believe there 

 is a certain value in reproducing the impressions made by the relatively 

 uncontaminated Gulf peoples on the more intelligent white men who 

 first encountered them. The absolute value of such opinions is, of 

 course, limited. Wlien representatives of two different peoples meet, 

 they waste no time in making an estimate of each other's physical, 

 mental, and moral equipment, but if these peoples are of cultures 

 widely diverse, one of which belongs to a disappearing culture with- 

 out the means of spreading its own impressions broadcast or trans- 

 mitting them to posterity, while the other is advancing and embraces 

 all such facilities, the picture which the student receives is similar to 

 that which a jury would have in a case in which only one side is 

 represented. The judgments are based upon a single set of standards 

 assumed to represent the normal, natural, and right, and this is as 

 true of those who, like Tacitus or Rousseau, idealize the less cultured 

 race as of downright detractors of it. In both situations the stand- 

 ards are the same, except that the one party attributes these to the 

 race which it extols while the other denies that it possesses them. Ob- 

 viously the standards of neither, the standards of no race, furnish a 

 fixed basis for comparison. All we can attempt is to get the relative 

 assumed differences between the peoples under discussion and try to 

 allocate to them their proper positions, still relative, among the 

 peoples of the earth taken as a whole. 



First, I will insert a few quotations bearing mainly on the physical 

 types of the Southeastern Indians. 



Seeking to describe the Powhatan Indians, Strachey says: 



Their haire is black, grosse, long^ and thick; the men have no beardes; their 

 noses are broad, flatt, and full at the end, great bigg lippes, and wyde mouthes, 

 yet nothing so unsightly as the Moores; they are generally tall of stature, and 

 streight, of comely proportion, and the women have handsome lymbes, sclender 

 armes, and pretty hands, and when they sing they have a pleasaunt tange in 

 their voices. (Strachey, 1849, p. 64.) 



The Spanish monk, Andreas de San Miguel, gives us the following 

 short note regarding the Indians of the Guale province about St. 

 Simons Island, Ga., in 1595 : 



All commonly are very healthy, swift of foot, and have very good figures 

 and good limbs: their color is like that of the Indians of this land [Mexico] 

 and some are whiter, especially the Indian women ; generally they are tall, 

 equally agile and it is said that, after wounding a deer, they run after it so 

 swiftly as not to lose sight of it. (Garcia, 1902, p. 194.) 



Speaking of the related Creeks, Swan says: 



The men, in general, are of a good size, stout, athletic and handsome: the 

 women are also of good height, but coarse, thick-necked and ugly. Being 



