A young Indian warrior is, notoriously, the most thoroughgoing beau
in the world. Bond-street and Broadway furnish no subjects that will
undergo as much crimping and confinement, to appear in full dress. We are
confident that we have observed such a character constantly occupied with
his paints and his pocket-glass, three full hours, laying on his colours,
and adjusting his tresses, and contemplating, from time to time, with
visible satisfaction, the progress of his growing attractions. When he
has finished, the proud triumph of irresistible charms is in his eye. The
chiefs and warriors, in full dress, have one, two, or three broad clasps
of silver about their arms; generally jewels in their ears, and often
in their noses; and nothing is more common than to see a thin circular
piece of silver, of the size of a dollar, depending from their nose, a
little below the upper lip. Nothing shows more clearly the influence of
fashion. This ornament—so painfully inconvenient, as it evidently is to
them, and so horribly ugly and disfiguring—seems to be the utmost finish
of Indian taste. Porcupine quills, stained of different colours, are
twisted in their hair. Tails of animals hang from their hair behind. A
necklace of bears’ or alligators’ teeth, or claws of the bald eagle,
hangs loosely down; and an interior and smaller circle of large red
beads, or in default of them, a rosary of red hawthorn berries, surrounds
the neck. From the knees to the feet, the legs are decorated with great
numbers of little perforated cylindrical pieces of silver or brass, that
emit a simultaneous tinkle as the person walks. If, to all this, he add
an American hat, and a soldier’s coat, of blue, faced with red, over the
customary calico shirt of the gaudiest colours that can be found, he
lifts his feet high, and steps firmly on the ground, to give his tinklers
a uniform and full sound; and apparently considers his person with as
much complacency as the human bosom can be supposed to feel. This is a
very curtailed view of an Indian beau; but every reader, competent to
judge, will admit its fidelity, as far as it goes, to the description of
a young Indian warrior over the whole Mississippi Valley, when prepared
to take part in a public dance.