THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 415 



women and children and dogs all come together at the next, and these gormandize 

 and glut themselves to an enormous extent, though the men very seldom do. 



It is time that an error on this subject, which has gone generally abroad in the 

 world, was corrected. It is everywhere asserted, and almost universally believed, 

 that the Indians are lt enormous eaters"; but, comparatively speaking, I assure my 

 readers that this is an error. I venture to say that there are no persons on earth who 

 practice greater prudence and self-denial than the men do (amongst the wild Indi- 

 ans), who are constantly in war and in the chase, or in their athletic sports and exer- 

 cises, for all of which they are excited by the highest ideas of pride and honor, and 

 every kind of excess is studiously avoided ; and for a very great part of their lives 

 the most painful abstinence is enforced upon themselves for the purpose of prepar- 

 ing their bodies and their limbs for these extravagant exertions. Many a man who 

 has been a few weeks along the frontier amongst the drunken, naked, and beggared 

 part of the Indian race, and run home and written a book on Indians, has no doubt 

 often seen them eat to beastly excess; and he has seen them also guzzle whisky (and 

 perhaps sold it to them) till he has seen them glutted and besotted, without energy 

 to move ; and many and thousands of such things can always be seen where white 

 people have made beggars of them, and they have nothing to do but lie under a 

 fence and beg a whole week to get meat and whisky enough for one feast and one 

 carouse ; but amongst the wild Indians in this country there are no beggars — no 

 drunkards — and every man, from a beautiful natural precept, studies to keep his 

 body and mind in such a healthy shape and condition as will at all times enable him 

 to use his weapons in self-defense, or struggle for the prize in their manly games. 



As I before observed, these men generally eat but twice a day, and many times not 

 more than once, and those meals are light and simple compared with the meals that 

 are swallowed in the civilized world ; and by the very people also who sit at the 

 festive board three times a day, making a jest of the Indian for his eating, when they 

 actually guzzle more liquids, besides their eating, than would fill the stomach of an 

 Indian. 



There are, however, many seasons and occasions in the y"ear with all Indians, when 

 they fast for several days in succession ; and others where they can get nothing to 

 eat; and at such times (their habits are such) they may be seen to commence with 

 an enormous meal, and because they do so, it is an insufficient reason why we should 

 for ever remain under so egregious an error with regard to a single custom of these 

 people. 



I have seen so many of these, and lived with them, and traveled with them, and 

 oftentimes felt as if I should starve to death on an equal allowance, that I am fully 

 convinced that I am correct in saying that the North American Indians, taking them 

 in the aggregate, even where they have an abundance to subsist on, eat less than any 

 civilized population of equal numbers that I have ever traveled amongst. 



Their mode of curing and preserving the buffalo meat is somewhat curious, and in 

 fact it is almost incredible also ; for it is all cured or dried in the sun, without the 

 aid of salt or smoke ! The- method of doing this is the same amongst all the tribes, 

 from this to the Mexican provinces, and is as follows : The choicest parts of the flesh 

 from the buffalo are cut out by the squaws, and carried home on their backs or on 

 horses, and there cut "across the grain," in such a manner as will take alternately the 

 layers of lean and fat ; and having prepared it all in this way, in strips about half 

 an inch in thickuess, it is hung up by hundreds and thousands of pounds on poles 

 resting on crotches, out of the reach of dogs or wolves, and exposed to the rays of the 

 sun for several days, when it becomes so effectually dried, that it can be carried to 

 any part of the world without damage. This seems almost an unaccountable thing 

 and the more so, as it is done in the hottest months of the year, and also in all the 

 different latitudes of an Indian country. 



So singular a fact as this can only be accounted for, I consider, on the ground of 

 the extraordinary rarity and purity of the air which we meet with in these vast 



