The Indians of North America. 87 
was a distinction of castes marked by colors of costume. Royalty 
wore purple, the nobility scarlet, the commons yellow. 
War is the only high road to distinction, but oratory, hunting and 
skill in athletic sports are highly prized. Indians are constantly 
engaged in war, their object being, for revenge, for the support of 
rights to hunt or fish, to possess the lands of another tribe, to 
obtain prisoners for slaves or sacrifices, or for the love of military 
glory. 
They generally do not notify their enemy, and seldom take the 
field in numerous bodies. For want of provision or food, and 
other conveniences, in quantity, can not keep large armies together 
for a long period. 
Their warriors are often obliged to go through most cruel and 
bloody ceremonies before the youths are admitted to the rank of 
warriors. (See Catlin among the Mandans). 
Their weapons consist of bows and arrows, lances, spears, war 
clubs, slings, tomahawks, lassoes. The Choctaws used blow-guns, 
from which they shot an arrow feathered with the down of the 
thistle. In Mexico they were called ‘‘ cerbotlane,” and Montezuma 
compared the muskets of tne Spaniards to this weapon. 
Lewis and Clark, and Carver describe a species of tomahawk 
called ‘“‘ pogamoggion,” used by tribes of the West, the Shoshones 
and the Chippeways. 
The Toltecs used a species of sword ; it consisted of a long club 
set with two opposite rows of sharp flints. 
The Algonquins and Iroquois used a kind of cuirass made of 
rushes, or pliable sticks. 
The Virginians used armor made of sticks wickered together 
with thread. 
The Shoshones covered the body with skins, united together 
with glue and sand; and many tribes used round shields made of 
thick bull hide. 
For purposes of defence and to give protection to an inferior 
force, they fixed strong pickets around their villages, or raised an 
earthen bank, on the tops of which they planted palisadoes. 
Hochelaga near Montreal was fortified with three lines of wooden 
ramparts; on the inside were stages accessible by ladders, on 
which heaps of stones were collected, to cast down on the heads of 
the foe. Many towns in Canada were palisaded. 
Champlain describes forts on the St. Lawrence. 
