America, agriculture has become by coercion the business of the Indians; and
among many of the independent hordes of both continents it is conjoined with
hunting as a means of subsistence. Again, in the West India Islands where there
was no game, the wants of an immense population were supplied in part by^
agricultural labor, hut perhaps in a still greater degree by cultivating the indigenous
fruits. Many tribes resort with regularity to all these modes of subsistence,
according to the return of the seasons; thus employing the spring of the year in
fishing, the summer in agriculture, the autumn and winter in hunting.
The Cherokees, as we shall hereafter see, have become an agricultural nation
by the force of example; hut in Mexico there are tribes which have inhabited the
same localities which their ancestors possessed some centuries ago, and who lead
the peaceable life of cultivators of the soil, exempt from the contingencies to
which the hunting tribes are always exposed.*
Although the Americans have derived their horses from the Europeans, they
have managed them from the first with surprising dexterity. Among many
tribes in both Americas; the fondness for these animals amounts to a passion:
whole tribes have assumed the equestrian character, so that they hunt and fight
exclusively on horseback; and the single province of Chaco, in Paraguay, contains
no less than twenty of these nations. They are also numerous throughout Brazil
and Patagonia, and in the region between the Mississippi river and the Rocky
Mountains. Yet strange as it may appear, there is scarcely an example among
the free Indians, of& horse being used for agricultural purposes.f
The bold physical development of the American savage is accompanied by a
corresponding acuteness in the organs of sense. Although nature has done much,
education has contributed more to the perfection of these faculties. The constant
state of suspicion and alarm in which the Indian lives, compels him to observe a
sleepless vigilance. His senses are incessantly employed to preserve himself from
surprise and destruction, and to foil the stratagems of his enemy. It is said that
the Charibs of the Antilles could, by the scent alone, follow a man through the
woods with the same precision that a northern Indian traces another by his foot*
Humboldt, Polit. Essay on New Spain, B. II, chap. 6.
t Among other modes of revenging themselves on the Spaniards; the Indians committed an
incessant pillage of their horses. Thus in the space of fifty years, says Dobrizhoffer, an hpndred
thousand of these animals were driven from the estates of the Spaniards by the Abipones of Chaco
alone/, and the same author>4rads, that no less than four thousand horses were frequently carried off
by the Paraguayan Indians in a single assault.—/iw /. o f the Abipones, III, p. 8.
steps; and that they could even detect the nation to which their enemy belonged.*
“ I observed,” says Dobrizhoffer, ^ that almost all the Abipones (of Paraguay) had
black but rather small eyes; yet they see more acutely with them than we do
jjyith our large ones, being able clearly to distinguish such minute and distant
objects as would escape the eye of the most quicksighted European.”! The
singular absence of physical deformity has been noticed'by all travellers. Such
defects as arise in childhood are, for obvious reasons, less likely to happen in savage
than in civilised life. But on the other hand, the various congenital defects
probably occur in an equal ratio in both conditions; but it is well known that the
Indians destroy such of their children as labor under these misfortunes, on the
plea that they would be helpless, and of Course dependent members of the
community. This kind of infanticide is an almost universal usage among the
barbarous tribes, who attribute physical deformity to the workings of an evil
spiritj and children of delicate and unpromising constitutions often suffer the same
fate.
How idle is that theory which attributes to these people less hardiness of
constitution than belongs. to the European! What, in truth, can exceed their
endurance of fatigue, of hunger, of thirst and of cold ? By day and by night, in
summer and winter, over mountains, and through rivers and forests, they pursue
their determined course, whether the object be revenge on an enemy, or food for
their families at home. It has been assumed in evidence of their weakness that
they sunk under the labor of the mines much sooner than either Europeans or
Negroes: but it must be borne in mind that the Indian is incapable of servitude,
and that his spirit sunk at once in captivity, and with it his physical energy ;
While, on the other hand, the more pliant Negro, yielding to his fate, and accommodating
himself to his condition, bore his heavy burthen with comparative ease.
Thus it was that a moral influence destroyed thousands of Indians in Hispaniola,
until the race of islanders became extinct, while their fellow laborers lived and
multiplied in defiance of oppression.
Dr. Robertson has been at some pains to prove the physical inferiority of the
American Indians; and yet, in a note, he quotes from Godin ample evidence
that the seeming weakness of these people is not a natural defect, but the mere
result of an inactive life. “ The Indians in warm climates,” says Godin, “ such as
those oq the coasts of the South Sea, on the River of Amazons, and the river
Selden, Archseolog. Amer. I, p. 426. t Hist, of the Abipones, II, p. 13.