Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/166

 130 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. maize and a few other vegetables. Two winter months are employed by the men in hunting beaver and other fur animals. During the rest of the year, the whole population remove to the buifalo grounds, subsist on its meat, and preserve a portion of it. They address prayers to Wahconda, the Creator and Pre- server of the world, to whom they ascribe infinite power and omnipresence. But, although they believe in a future life, it cannot be said that this vague belief has any important influence over their conduct. Like all the other Indians, they put more faith in their dreams, omens, and jugglers, in the power of imaginary deities of their own creation, and of those consecrated relics to which the Canadians have given the singular appel- lation of medicine. The Missouri Indians of the male sex exceed in height the ordinary average of the Europeans ; but the women are in proportion shorter and thicker. The average facial angle is 78°, (that of the Cherokees 75°) ; the transverse line of direction of the eyes is rectilinear ; the nose aquiline ; the lips thicker than those of the Europeans ; the cheek-bones promi- nent, but not angular.* The recently born infants are of a reddish brown color, which after a while becomes whiter, and then gradually assumes that tint, which is not perfectly uniform amongst all the Indians, and which, for want of a better approximation, we call copper color. They designate that of the European by words which mean white or pale. Theirs is not the effect of exposure, as all parts of the body present the same appearance.-]* The women marry very young, bear children from the age of thirteen to forty, and have generally from four to six. The Indians who cultivate the soil, are perpetually exposed to the attacks of the wandering tribes. Those of the Missouri had also for enemies the Sauks and Foxes, who have acted too much in that quarter the same part as the Five Nations in called the Arkansas Beaux Hommes. The Osages, who visited Wash- ington and New York twenty-five years ago, were the finest race of Indians ever seen in our Atlantic cities, and answered the description of the Omahaws given by Dr. Say. That gentleman omits another uniform physical character, straight black hair and black eyes. f Captain Clavering says, that an Eskimau boy of East Greenland, after being thoroughly washed, was of a copper color.
 * The superiority of this family of Indians struck the French, who