228 BUREiAU or American ethnology [Bdll. 137 



Lower-Quarter" where most of the inhabitants had but one eye. He 

 could obtain no explanation of the fact. Only one case of total 

 blindness came to his attention, "and then they would give me no 

 account how his blindness came. They had a use for him, which 

 was to lead him with a girl, woman or boy, by a string; so they put 

 what burdens they pleased upon his back, and made him very service- 

 able upon all such occasions." He happened to see no left-handed 

 men among them. (Lawson, 1860, pp. 99, 283, 330.) 



Catesby's account is partly based on his own experience, partly 

 derived from Lawson : 



The Indians of Carolina are generally tall, and well shap'd, with well- 

 proportioned limbs, though their wrists are small, their fingers long and slender ; 

 their faces are rather broad, yet have good features and manly aspects; their 

 noses are not flat, nor their lips too thick ; their eyes are black, and placed wide 

 from one another ; their hair is black, lank, and very coarse, approaching to the 

 substance of horsehair ; the colour of their skin is tawny, yet would not be so 

 dark did they not daub themselves over with Bear's oyl continually from their 

 infancy, mixing therewith some vegetable juices, particularly that of the San- 

 guinaria, figured in Eort. Elt. p. 834, Vol. II. The women before marriage are 

 generally finely shaped, and many of them have pretty features. No people 

 have stronger eyes, or see better in the night or day than Indicms, though in 

 their houses they live in perpetual smoke ; their beards are naturally very thin 

 of hair, which they are continually plucking away by the roots ; . . . they have 

 generally good teeth, and a sweet breath. There are few amongst these 

 Americcms so robust, and of so athletick a form as is amongst Europeans, nor 

 are they so capable of lifting great burthens, and enduring so hard labour ; but 

 in hunting they are indefatigable, and will travel further, and endure more 

 fatigue than a European is capable of. In this employment their women serve 

 instead of pack-horses, carrying the skins of the Deer they kill, which by much 

 practice they i)erform with incredible labour and patience. I have often 

 travelled with them 15 and 20 miles a day for many days successively, each woman 

 carrying at least 60, and some above 80 weight at their back. 



Running and leaping these Savages perform with surpassing agility. They 

 are naturally a very sweet people, their bodies emitting nothing of that rankness 

 that is so remarkable in Negroes; and as in travelling I have been sometimes 

 necessitated to sleep with them, I never perceived any ill smell ; and though their 

 cabbins are never paved nor swept, and kept with the utmost neglect and sloven- 

 liness, yet are void of those stinks or unsavory smells that we meet with in the 

 dwellings of our poor and indolent. (Catesby, 1731-43, vol. 2, p. vin.) 



Du Pratz thus describes the Indians he had met along the lower 

 course of the Mississippi River, his intimacy with the Natchez having 

 been closest : 



All the natives of America in general are very well formed. One sees few 

 under 5^4 feet, and many taller. The leg is made as if in a mold. It is sinewy 

 and the flesh on it firm. They have long thighs, the head erect and a little flat 

 on top. Their features are regular. They have black eyes, and hair of the same 

 color, coarse and straight. If one never sees those who are extremely fat, no 

 more does he see those as thin as consumptives. The men are ordinarily better 

 formed than the women. They are more sinewy and the women more fleshy. 



