530 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



of wild and hostile Indians, for the enjoyment of his liberty, of which there are 

 occasional instances, and when they succeed they are admired by the savage ; and 

 as they come with a good share of the tricks and arts of civilization, they are at 

 once looked npon by the tribe as extraordinary and important personages, and gen- 

 erally marry the daughters of chiefs, thus uniting theirs with the best blood in the 

 nation, which produce these remarkably fine and powerful men that I have spoken of 

 above. 



METHODS OF LIVING. 



Although the Indians of North America, where dissipation and disease have not got 

 amongst them, undoubtedly are a longer lived and healthier race, and capable of en- 

 during far more bodily privation and pain than civilized people can, yet I do not 

 believe that the differences are constitutional, or anything more than the results of 

 different circumstances and a different education. As an evidence in support of this 

 assertion I will allude to the hundreds of men whom I have seen and traveled with 

 who have been for several year3 together in the Rocky Mountains, in the employ- 

 ment of the fur companies, where they have lived exactly upon the Indian system, 

 continually exposed to the open air and the weather and to all the disappointments 

 and privations peculiar to that mode of life, and I am bound to say that I never saw 

 a more hardy and healthy race of men in my life whilst they remain in the country, 

 nor any who fall to pieces quicker when they get back to confined and dissipated* 

 life, which they easily fall into when they return to their own country. 



INDIAN WOMEN. 



The Indian women, who are obliged to lead lives of severe toil and drudgery, be- 

 come exceedingly healthy and robust, giving easy birth and strong constitutions to 

 their children, which, in a measure, may account for the simplicity and fewness of 

 their diseases, which in infancy and childhood are very seldom known to destroy 

 life. 



PROBABLE REASON FOR SMALL FAMILIES. 



If there were anything like an equal proportion of deaths amongst the Indian 

 •children that is found in the civilized portions of the world, the Indian country would 

 long since have been depopulated, on account of the decided disproportion of children 

 they produce. It is a very rare occurrence for an Indian woman to be blessed with 

 more than four or five children during her life; and, generally speaking, they seem 

 contented with two or three, when in civilized communities it is no uncommon thing 

 for a woman to be the mother of ten or twelve, and sometimes to bear two or even 

 three at a time, of which I never recollect to have met an instance during all my ex- 

 tensive travels in the Indian country, though it is possible that I might occasionally 

 have passed them. 



For so striking a dissimilarity as there evidently is between these people and 

 those living according to the more artificial modes of life, in a subject seemingly 

 alike natural to both, the reader will perhaps expect me to furnish some rational 

 and decisive causes. Several very plausible reasons have been advanced for such a 

 deficiency on the part of the Indians, by authors who have written on the subject, 

 but whose opinions I should be very slow to adopt, inasmuch as they have been 

 based upon the Indian's inferiority (as the same authors have taken great pains to 

 prove in most other respects) to their pale-faced neighbors. 



I know of but one decided cause for this difference which I would venture to ad- 

 vance, and which I confidently believe to be the principal obstacle to a more rapid 

 increase of their families, which is the very great length of time the women sub- 

 mit to lactation, generally carrying their children at the breast to the age of two and 

 sometimes three and even four years. 



INDIAN CHILD-BIRTH. 



The astonishing ease and success with which the Indian women pass through the 

 most painful and most trying of all human difficulties, which fall exclusively to thvj 



