It is contended that the complexion of the Indian has had the tendency to
grow darker and darker, from his having inhabited smoky, bark wigwams,
and having held cleanliness in no very exceptional honor; and the
contention is sought to be made good by the citing of a case of a young,
fair-skinned boy, who, taking up with an Indian tribe, and adopting in
every particular their mode of life, developed by his seventieth year
a complexion as swarthy, and of as distinctively Indian a hue, as that
of any pure specimen of the race.

If we accept this as a sound view, which, however, carried to its logical
sequence, should have evolved, one would imagine, the negro out of the
Indian long are this, why may we not, in the way of argument, fairly and
legitimately provoked by the theory, look for and consider the converse
picture (now that the Indian lives in much the same manner as the ordinary
poor husbandman, and now that we have certainly no warrant for imputing
to him uncleanly habits) the gradual approach in his complexion to the
Anglo-Saxon type? If we entertain this counter-proposition, it will then
be a question between its operation, and his marriage with the white,
as to which explains the fact of the decline now of the dark complexion
with the Indian.

The custom of piercing the nose, and suspending nose-jewels therefrom,
has fallen into disrepute, the Indian, perhaps, having been brought to
view these as contributing, in a questionable way, to his adornment.

The Indian woman has a finer development, as a rule, than the white
woman. We may, in part, discover the cause for this in the prevalence
of the custom, already alluded to, of the mother carrying her offspring
on her back, which, with its not undue strain on the dorsal muscles,