Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/15

 On the colour of tie Indians of America. %

the diverfity of colour, that America was not peopled from any part of Afia, or of the old world, but that the natives were a feparate creation. Of this opinion, is Lord Kames, and which he labours to eftablifh in his late pub lication, entitled, Sketches of the Hifiory of Man. But his reafoning on this point, for a local creation, is contrary both to revelation, and facts. His chief argument, that " there is not a fmgle hair on the body of any American, nor the leaft appearance of a beard," is utterly deftitute of foundation, as can be attefted by all who have had any communication with them of this more prefently. Moreover, to form one creation of '.whites, afecond creation for the yellows, and a third for the blacks, is a weaknefs, of which infinite wifdom is incapable. Its operations are plain, eafy, conftant, and perfect. The variegation therefore of colours among the human race, depends upon a fecond caufe. Lord Kames himfelf acknowledges, that " the Spanifh in habitants of Carthagena in South-America lofe their vigour and colour in a few months.'*

We are informed by the anatomical obfervations of our American phyfi- cians, concerning the Indians, that they have difcerned a certain fine cowl, or web, of a red gluey fubftance, clofe under the outer (kin, to which it reflects the colour ; as the epidermis, or outer fkin, is alike clear in every different creature. And experience, which is the beft medium to difcover truth, gives the true caufe why this corpus mucofum, or gluifh web, is red in the Indians, and white in us ; the parching winds, and hot fun-beams, beating upon their naked bodies, in their various gradations of life> necefiarily tarnifh their fkins with the tawny red colour. Add to this, their conftant anointing themfelves with bear's oil, or greafe, mixt with a certain red root, which, by a peculiar property, is able alone, in a few years time, to produce the Indian colour in thofe who are white born, and who have even advanced to maturity, Thefe metamorphofes I have often feen.

At the Shawano main camp *, I faw a Penfylvanian, a white man by 'birth, and in profeffien a chriftian, who, by the inclemency of the fun,

eagles tails, to the camp of the Shawano Indians, to apprehend one Peter Shartee, (a Frenchman) who, by his artful paintings, and the fupine condufl of the Penfylvanian govern ment, had decoyed a large body of the Shawano from the Englilh, to the French, intcreft. But fearing the confequences, he went round an hundred miles, toward the Cheerake nation, with his family, and the head warriors, and thereby evaded the danger.
 * In the year 1747, I headed a company of the cheerful, brave Chikkafah, with the

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