CHAPTER XXVIII.

BODILY CONSTITUTION AND DISEASES.

The Indians are in general a strong race of men. It is very common to see a hunter come in with a whole deer on his back, fastened with a _Happis_, a kind of band with which they carry loads; it rests against the breast, that which the women use rests against the forehead. In this manner they will carry a load which many a white man would not have strength enough to raise from the ground. An Indian, named Samuel, once took the flour which was ground out of a bushel of wheat upon his back at sun-rise within two miles from Nazareth, and arrived with it in the evening of the same day at his camp at Wyoming. When the Indians build houses, they carry large logs on their shoulders from the place where the tree is cut down to where they are building.

Nevertheless, when put to agricultural or other manual labour, the Indians do not appear so strong as the whites; at least, they cannot endure it so long. Many reasons may be given for this, besides their not being accustomed to that kind of work. It is probably in part to be ascribed to their want of substantial food, and their intemperate manner of living; eating, when they have it, to excess, and at other times being days and weeks in a state of want. Those who have been brought up to regular labour, like ourselves, become robust and strong and enjoy good health. Such was the case with the Christian Indians in the Moravian settlements.

So late as about the middle of the last century, the Indians were yet a hardy and healthy people, and many very aged men and women were seen among them, some of whom thought they had lived about one hundred years. They frequently told me and others that when they were young men, their people did not marry so early as they did since, that even at twenty they were called boys and durst not wear a breech-cloth, as the men did at that time, but had only a small bit of a skin hanging before them. Neither, did they say, were they subject to so many disorders as in later times, and many of them calculated on dying of old age. But since that time a great change has taken place in the constitution of those Indians who live nearest to the whites. By the introduction of ardent spirits among them, they have been led into vices which have brought on disorders which they say were unknown before; their blood became corrupted by a shameful complaint, which the Europeans pretend to have received from the original inhabitants of America, while these say they had never known or heard of it until the Europeans came among them. Now the Indians are infected with it to a great degree; children frequently inherit it from their parents, and after lingering for a few years at last die victims to this poison.

Those Indians who have not adopted the vices of the white people live to a good age, from 70 to 90. Few arrive at the age of one hundred years. The women, in general, live longer than the men.

The Indians do not appear to be more or less exempt than the whites from the common infirmities of old age. I have known old men among them who had lost their memory, their sight, and their teeth. I have also seen them at eighty in their second childhood and not able to help themselves.

The Indian women are not in general so prolific as those of the white race. I imagine this defect is owing to the vicious and dissolute life they lead since the introduction of spirituous liquors. Among our Christian Indians, we have had a couple who had been converted for thirty years and had always led a regular life, and who had thirteen children. Others had from six to nine. In general, however, the Indians seldom have more than four or five children.

The Indian children, generally, continue two years at the breast, and there are instances of their sucking during four years. Mothers are very apt to indulge their last child; children in this respect enjoy the same privilege alike.

I have never heard of any nation or tribe of Indians who destroyed their children, when distorted or deformed, whether they were so born or came to be so afterwards. I have on the contrary seen very particular care taken of such children. Nor have I ever been acquainted with any Indians that made use of artificial means to compress or alter the natural shape of the heads of their children, as some travellers have, I believe, pretended.

The disorders to which the Indians are most commonly subjected are pulmonary consumptions, fluxes, fevers and severe rheumatisms, all proceeding probably from the kind of life they lead, the hardships they undergo, and the nature of the food that they take. Intermitting and bilious fevers set in among them regularly in the autumn, when their towns are situated near marshy grounds or ponds of stagnant water, and many die in consequence of them. I have observed that these fevers generally make their first appearance in the season of the wild plum, a fruit that the Indians are particularly fond of. Sometimes also after a famine or long suffering for want of food, when they generally make too free an use of green maize, squashes and other watery vegetables. They are also subject to a disease which they call the _yellow vomit_, which, at times, carries off many of them. They generally die of this disease on the second or third day after the first attack.

Their old men are very subject to rheumatisms in the back and knees; I have known them at the age of 50 or 60 to be laid up for weeks and months at a time on this account, and I have seen boys 10 and 12 years of age, who through colds or fits of sickness had become so contracted that they never afterwards recovered the use of their limbs.

Worms are a very common disorder among Indian children, and great numbers of them die from that cause. They eat a great deal of green corn when in the milk, with beans, squashes, melons, and the like; their bellies become remarkably large, and it is probably in that manner that the worms are generated. I rather think that Indian children suffer less in teething than the whites.

The gout, gravel, and scrofula or king’s evil, are not known among the Indians. Nor have I ever known any one that had the disorder called the _Rickets_. Consumptions are very frequent among them since they have become fond of spirituous liquors, and their young men in great numbers fall victims to that complaint. A person who resides among them may easily observe the frightful decrease of their numbers from one period of ten years to another. Our vices have destroyed them more than our swords.