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104 tries man's nerve so much as an unexpected night attack—and when the cattle can be driven off to advantage. In some points their characters have been, it is now granted, greatly misunderstood. Their forced gravity and calmness—purely "company manners"—were not suspected to cloak merriment, sociability, and a general fondness of feasts and fun. Their apathy and sternness, which were meant for reserve and dignity among strangers, gave them an air of ungeniality which does not belong to their mental constitutions. Their fortitude and endurance of pain is the result, as in the prize-fighter, of undeveloped brain.

The Sioux are tall men, straight, and well made: they are never deformed, and are rarely crippled, simply because none but the able-bodied can live. The shoulders are high and somewhat straight; the figure is the reverse of the sailor's, that is to say, while the arms are smooth, feeble, and etiolated, the legs are tolerably muscular; the bones are often crooked or bowed in the equestrian tribes; they walk as if they wanted the ligamentum teres; there is a general looseness of limb, which promises, however, lightness, endurance, and agility, and which, contrasted with the Caucasian race, suggests the gait of a wild compared with that of a tame animal. Like all savages, they are deficient in corporeal strength: a civilized man finds no difficulty in handling them: on this road there is only one Indian (a Shoshonee) who can whip a white in a "rough and tumble." The temperament is usually bilious-nervous; the sanguine is rare, the lymphatic rarer, and I never knew or heard of an albino. The hands, especially in the higher tribes, are decidedly delicate, but this is more observable in the male than in the female; the type is rather that of the Hindoo than of the African or the European. The feet, being more used than the other extremities, and unconfined by boot or shoe, are somewhat splay, spreading out immediately behind the toes, while the heel is remarkably narrow. In consequence of being carried straight to the fore—the only easy position for walking through grass—they tread, like the ant-eater, more heavily on the outer than on the inner edge. The sign of the Indian is readily recognized by the least experienced tracker.

It is erroneously said that he who has seen a single Indian has seen them all. Of course there is a great similarity among savages and barbarians of the same race and climate. The same pursuits, habits, and customs naturally produce an identity of expression which, as in the case of husband and wife, parent and child, moulds the features into more or less of likeness. On the other hand, a practiced eye will distinguish the Indian individually or by bands as easily as the shepherd, by marks invisible to others, can swear to his sheep. I have little doubt that to the savages all white men look alike.

The Prairie Indian's hair and complexion have already been described. According to some savages the build of the former