In foot-note of p. 107 of vol. iii. of “U. S. Explorations for a Railroad Route to the Pacific Ocean,” we are told, “Many of the Indians of Zuni (New Mexico) are white. They have a fair skin, blue eyes, chestnut or auburn hair, and are quite good-looking.
They claim to be full-blooded Zunians, and have no tradition of intermarriage with any foreign race. The circumstance creates no surprise among this people, for from time immemorial a similar class of people has existed among the tribe.”
Winchell says:
“The ancient Indians of California, in the latitude of forty-two degrees, were as black as the negroes of Guinea, while in Mexico were tribes of an olive or reddish complexion, relatively light. Among the black races of tropical regions we find, generally, some light-colored tribes interspersed. These sometimes have light hair and blue eyes. This is the case with the Tuareg of the Sahara, the Afghans of India, and the aborigines of the banks of the Oronoco and the Amazon.” (Winchell’s “Preadamites,” p. 185.)
William Penn said of the Indians of Pennsylvania, in his letter of August, 1683:
“The natives . . . are generally tall, straight, well-built, and of singular proportion; they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty chin. . . . Their eye is little and black, not unlike a straight-looked Jew. . . . I have seen among them as comely European-like faces of both sexes as on your side of the sea; and truly an Italian complexion hath not much more of the white, and the noses of several of them have as much of the Roman. . . . For their original, I am ready to believe them to be of the Jewish race—I mean of the stock of the ten tribes—and that for the following reasons: first, in the next place, I find them to be of the like countenance, and their children of so lively a resemblance that a man would think himself in Duke’s Place or Berry Street in London when he seeth them. But this is not alclass="underline" they agree in rites, they reckon by moons, they offer their first-fruits, they have a kind of feast of tabernacles, they are said to lay their altars upon twelve stones, their mourning a year, customs of women, with many other things that do not now occur.”
Upon this question of complexion Catlin, in his “Indians of North America,” vol. i., p. 95, etc., gives us some curious information. We have already seen that the Mandans preserved an image of the ark, and possessed legends of a clearly Atlantean character. Catlin says: “A stranger in the Mandan village is first struck with the different shades of complexion and various colors of hair which he sees in a crowd about him, and is at once disposed to exclaim, ‘These are not Indians.’
There are a great many of these people whose complexions appear as light as half-breeds; and among the women particularly there are many whose skins are almost white, with the most pleasing symmetry and proportion of feature; with hazel, with gray, and with blue eyes; with mildness and sweetness of expression and excessive modesty of demeanor, which render them exceedingly pleasing and beautiful. Why this diversity of complexion I cannot tell, nor can they themselves account for it. Their traditions, so far as I can learn them, afford us no information of their having had any knowledge of white men before the visit of Lewis and Clarke, made to their village thirty-three years ago. Since that time until now (1835) there have been very few visits of white men to this place, and surely not enough to have changed the complexions and customs of a nation. And I recollect perfectly well that Governor Clarke told me, before I started for this place, that I would find the Mandans a strange people and half white.
“Among the females may be seen every shade and color of hair that can be seen in our own country except red or auburn, which is not to be found.
. . . There are very many of both sexes, and of every age, from infancy to manhood and old age, with hair of a bright silvery-gray, and in some instances almost perfectly white. This unaccountable phenomenon is not the result of disease or habit, but it is unquestionably an hereditary characteristic which runs in families, and indicates no inequality in disposition or intellect. And by passing this hair through my hands I have found it uniformly to be as coarse and harsh as a horse’s mane, differing materially from the hair of other colors, which, among the Mandans, is generally as fine and soft as silk.
“The stature of the Mandans is rather below the ordinary size of man, with beautiful symmetry of form and proportion, and wonderful suppleness and elasticity.”
Catlin gives a group (54) showing this great diversity in complexion: one of the figures is painted almost pure white, and with light hair.
The faces are European.
GOVERNOR
AND
OTHER
INDIANS
OF
THE
PUEBLO
OF
SAN
DOMINGO
,
NEW
MEXICO
.
Major James W. Lynd, who lived among the Dakota Indians for nine years, and was killed by them in the great outbreak of 1862, says (MS. “Hist.
of Dakotas,” Library, Historical Society, Minnesota, p. 47), after calling attention to the fact that the different tribes of the Sioux nation represent several different degrees of darkness of color: “The Dakota child is of lighter complexion than the young brave; this one lighter than the middle-aged man, and the middle-aged man lighter than the superannuated homo, who, by smoke, paint, dirt, and a drying up of the vital juices, appears to be the true copper-colored Dakota. The color of the Dakotas varies with the nation, and also with the age and condition of the individual. It may be set down, however, as a shade lighter than olive; yet it becomes still lighter by change of condition or mode of life, and nearly vanishes, even in the child, under constant ablutions and avoiding of exposure. Those children in the Mission at Hazlewood, who are taken very young, and not allowed to expose themselves, lose almost entirely the olive shade, and become quite as white as the American child. The Mandans are as light as the peasants of Spain, while their brothers, the Crows, are as dark as the Arabs. Dr.
Goodrich, in the ‘Universal Traveller,’ p. 154, says that the modern Peruvians, in the warmer regions of Peru, are as fair as the people of the south of Europe.”
The Aymaras, the ancient inhabitants of the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, are described as having an olive-brown complexion, with regular features, large heads, and a thoughtful and melancholy cast of countenance. They practised in early times the deformation of the skull.
Professor Wilson describes the hair of the ancient Peruvians, as found upon their mummies, as “a lightish brown, and of a fineness of texture which equals that of the Anglo-Saxon race.” “The ancient Peruvians,”
says Short (“North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 187), “appear, from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs, to have been an auburn-haired race.” Garcilasso, who had an opportunity of seeing the body of the king, Viracocha, describes the hair of that monarch as snow-white. Haywood tells us of the discovery, at the beginning of this century, of three mummies in a cave on the south side of the Cumberland River (Tennessee), who were buried in baskets, as the Peruvians were occasionally buried, and whose skin was fair and white, and their hair auburn, and of a fine texture. (“Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee,” p. 191.)
CHOCTAW
.
Neither is the common opinion correct which asserts all the American Indians to be of the same type of features. The portraits on this page and on pages 187 and 191, taken from the “Report of the U. S. Survey for a Route for a Pacific Railroad,” present features very much like those of Europeans; in fact, every face here could be precisely matched among the inhabitants of the southern part of the old continent.
SHAWNEES