232 BUREiAU 0¥ AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



quently, cautious ; very jealous of encroachments from their christian neighbors ; 

 and, likewise, content with freedom, in every turn of fortune. They are pos- 

 sessed of a strong comprehensive judgment, — can form surprisingly crafty 

 schemes, and conduct them with equal caution, silence, and address ; they admit 

 none but distinguished warriors, and old beloved men, into their councils. 

 They are slow, but very persevering in their undertaking^ — commonly temperate in 

 eating, but excessively immoderate in drinking. — They often transform them- 

 selves by liquor into the likeness of mad foaming bears. The women, in general, 

 are of a mild, amiable, soft disposition : exceedingly modest in their behaviour, 

 and very seldom noisy, either in the single, or married state. 



The men are expert in the use of fire-arms, — in shooting the bow, — and throw- 

 ing the feathered dart, and tomahawk, into the flying enemy. They resemble 

 the lynx, with their sharp i)enetrating black eyes, and are exceedingly swift 

 of foot; especially in a long chase: they will stretch away, through the rough 

 woods, by the bare track, for two or three hundred miles, in pursuit of a flying 

 enemy, with the continued speed, and eagerness, of a stanch pack of blood 

 hounds, till they shed blood. When they have allayed this their burning thirst, 

 they return home, at their leisure, unless they chance to be pursued, as is 

 sometimes the case; whence the traders say, "that an Indian is never in a 

 hurry, but when the devil is at his heels." . . . They seem quite easy, and in- 

 different, in every various scene of life, as if they were utterly divested of pas- 

 sions, and the sense of feeling. Martial virtue, and not riches, is their invariable 

 standard for preferment; for they neither esteem, nor despise any of their 

 people one jot more or less, on account of riches or dress. They compare both 

 these, to paint on a warrior's face; because it incites others to a spirit of 

 martial benevolence for their country, and pleases his own fancy, and the eyes 

 of spectators, for a little time, but is sweated off, while he is performing his 

 war-dances ; or is defaced, by the change of weather. [He adds that they spoke 

 of a deceitful person and his words as similar to a snake and to his tongue, 

 and that the Indians viewed their white acquaintances in such an unfavorable 

 light that] the English traders among them . . . are often very glad to be 

 allowed to pass muster with the Indian chieftains, as fellow bretheren of the 

 human species. [He cites in confirmation of this the fact that the Choctaw 

 called the English, not by a term applicable to human beings, but by one re- 

 sembling that of] a contemptible heterogeneous animal. (Adair, 1775, pp. 4-5, 

 7,13.) 



Adair's relatively unfavorable estimate of the Choctaw, as com- 

 pared with the Chickasaw, which he enlarges upon elsewhere (pp. 

 283, 285, 304), must be counteracted by reading Romans' precisely 

 contrary opinion and by remembering the inveterate hostility be- 

 tween the two tribes and the alliance of the one with the French 

 and the other with the English. 



For the rest it may be observed that the difference between intra- 

 tribal and intertribal virtue was precisely that being observed by the 

 contemporary nations of Europe and not widely different from the 

 distinction maintained down to the present day. Adair himself wit- 

 nesses to the reputation for dishonesty which the white traders had 

 already acquired. One Indian vice, drunkenness, was of European 

 origin. Adair justly notes that revenge was one of their besetting 

 sins, but he admits at the same time that martial virtue was their 



