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.