Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/153

Rh this condition he would then rush out, or be carried, to plunge into an icy stream or lake, or to roll in the snow. The operation was repeated, if necessary, on one or more succeeding days. It must have been prevailingly successful, or the native philosophy would have discredited and abandoned it. It seems to have been eminently adapted to insure a decisive result, either in killing or curing. If true science can ratify its method, its success or immunity is accounted for. Otherwise we must learn from it another lesson as to the capacities of endurance in the human organism.

A revolting subject, often brought under discussion and led on to widely contrasted decisions by historians and inquirers, has kept under debate the question whether that foul scourge, the penalty of sensual vice, now so prevalent here among the aborigines, was indigenous or introduced by Europeans. It has borne the titles of the French disease, the Italian disease, and the Indian disease. It is understood that our most able archæological investigators have effectually settled the question that the disease had its victims — as is proved by the condition of human bones — on this continent previous to the voyages of Columbus. It is by no means of universal prevalence among the Indian tribes, for while some few have been reduced by it to a most distressing condition, others have had no blight from it, or but very limited inflictions from it.

The manner in which the natives disposed of their dead, with more or less of sensitiveness and mourning in observances, and of superstition in their beliefs, and a continued regard for the resting-places, would of itself furnish the subject of an extended essay. Among the various tribes, and in some tribes at different periods, there was much range of diversity in these matters; and as in these regards the ways and feelings, the methods and observances of uncivilized men are very like in their variety and associations to those of civilized men, the subject is not of a character