toner's address. 
cupiers of the land. The testimony of the early 
voyagers and explorers is definite and uniform as to ♦ 
their general characteristics, their peculiar mode of 
life, their government and their arts. Their grade of 
advancement was manifest in their social and domestic 
life, in the construction of their wigwams, the location 
of villages, the variety of their food, their domestic 
utensils, their dress,^ in the care with which they 
"^"The origin and history of dress or raiment is a subject of much 
interest, in a study of the progress of our race. Clothing seems so 
much a matter of course, and which fashion, rank, and usage now 
control in all civilized countries, as scarcely ever to excite an inquiry 
as to whether there was a period in the history of man when he did 
not wear it. If we accept the theory that the human race has 
emerged from a state of savagery, this condition certainly existed, and 
with it a moral sense so feeble as not to recognize shame, and unable 
to control any desire on ethical grounds. It is evident that the pur- 
poses of dress among such a people would be different from that 
which governs civilized society at the present time. P>om a study of 
the habits and usages of the uncivilized races, it is probable that 
dress originated more in a necessity to protect exposed parts from in- 
jury and annoyance, than from any mental or moral conception of its 
propriety. It is undoubtedly true that climate as well as the produc- 
tions of a region and the methods adopted by races for procuring food, 
may to some extent determine whether the whole body or a part only 
be covered. For instance, the Esquimaux, from the rigor of the cli- 
mate, covers the whole body as a defense against the extreme cold ; 
while races living within the tropics, where clothing is not required 
for this purpose, are found to dwell in a state of almost complete 
nudity. The hunter and trapper, living by the chase, would naturally 
need and wear moccasins, the breech-clout, and perhaps leggings, 
wliile those living by fishing might be rather inconvenienced by them. 
The North American Indians, and particularly those living in the 
southern parts of the United States at the time this continent was first 
visited by Europeans, were found to live in nearly a nude state, or to 
wear little more than an apron. Farther north, tribes depending on 
game for subsistence wore in cold weather not only moccasins and 
