Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/169

Rh it from the want of abundant materials needing but slight help from hand-labor. The hide of the buffalo, and the skins of the deer, the beaver, and the smaller animals furnished him with loose or with close-fitting mantles. His feet and legs needed protection while he was tramping over rocks or through the bushes with their prongs and briers. Not till reaching years of maturity were the children of either sex subjected to the incumbrances of clothing; and in general the breech-cloth for men and a half-skirt for women served for all except state occasions. The more elaborate garments now seen among the aborigines owe more or less of their skill and ornaments to materials obtained from the whites, such as needles, beads, cords, silks, and bits of metal, though the Indian was by no means stinted in his own resources for a gala day. His well-dressed robes, soft and pliable, cured and tanned with or without the fur, wrought with porcupine quills and the feathers of birds, and his necklaces of bears' claws, the plumage of the eagle, and other devices, set him off in good forest guise. For extra adornment, or to add to his fierceness in some of his games, festivals, war, or scalp dances, he would add to his array, besides paint, the horns or the skins of the heads of some of his relations, — the bison, the bear, the deer, or the owl.

The aborigines, whether sedentary or roving, constructed their abodes for single families — wigwams, tepees, or lodges — by natural rules and for natural uses. They might have learned their art from the beaver. Where anything of lengthened or permanent habitation was looked for, more of solidity and thoroughness was given to them. Barks or skins, according to the abundance or ease with which they were to be procured, served equally well for the fabric. A few poles, planted as stakes in the circumference of a circle, brought together at the top, with an orifice for the smoke, a hole in the centre for the fire, bunks raised on bushes or skins, and a platform or shelf for storing