Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/96

86 their numbers within certain bounds, thoſe of labor and of voluntary abortion are added with the Indian. No wonder then if they multiply leſs than we do. Where food is regularly ſupplied, a ſingle farm will ſhow more of cattle, than a whole country of foreſts can of buffaloes. The ſame Indian women, when married to white traders, who feed them and their children plentifully and regularly, who exempt them from exceſſive drudgery, who keep them ſtationary and unexpoſed to accident, produce and raiſe as many children as the white women. Inſtances are known, under theſe circumſtances, of their rearing a dozen children. An inhuman practice once prevailed in this country, of making ſlaves of the Indians. It is a fact well known with us, that the Indian women ſo enſlaved produced and raiſed as numerous families as either the whites or blacks among whom they lived.—It has been ſaid, that the Indians have leſs hair than the whites, except on the head. But this is a fact of which fair proof can ſcarcely be had. With them it is diſgraceful to be hairy on the body. They ſay it likens them to hogs. They therefore pluck the hair as faſt as it appears. But the traders who marry their women, and prevail on them to diſcontinue this practice, ſay that nature is the ſame with them as with the whites. Nor, if the fact be true, is the conſequence neceſſary which has been drawn from it. Negroes have notoriously leſs hair than whites; yet they are more ardent. But if cold and moiſture be the agents of nature for diminiſhing the races of animals, how comes ſhe all at once to ſuſpend their operation as to the physical man of the new world, whom the Count