up of
contrary and even contradictory qualities, they are indolent, tranquil,
quiet, humane in peace; active, restless, cruel, ferocious in war:
courteous, attentive, hospitable, and even polite, when kindly treated;
haughty, stern, vindictive, when they are not; and their resentment is
the more to be dreaded, as they hold it a point of honor to dissemble
their sense of an injury till they find an opportunity to revenge it.

They are patient of cold and heat, of hunger and thirst, even beyond
all belief when necessity requires, passing whole days, and often
three or four days together, without food, in the woods, when on the
watch for an enemy, or even on their hunting parties; yet indulging
themselves in their feasts even to the most brutal degree of
intemperance. They despise death, and suffer the most excruciating
tortures not only without a groan, but with an air of triumph; singing
their death song, deriding their tormentors, and threatening them with
the vengeance of their surviving friends: yet hold it honorable to fly
before an enemy that appears the least superior in number or force.

Deprived by their extreme ignorance, and that indolence which
nothing but their ardor for war can surmount, of all the
conveniencies, as well as elegant refinements of polished life;
strangers to the softer passions, love being with them on the same
footing as amongst their fellow-tenants of the woods, their lives
appear to me rather tranquil than happy: they have fewer cares, but
they have also much fewer enjoyments, than fall to our share. I am
told, however, that, though insensible to love, they are not without
affections; are extremely awake to friendship, and passionately fond of
their children.

They are of a copper color, which is rendered more unpleasing by a
quantity of coarse red on their cheeks; but the children, when born,
are of a pale silver white; perhaps their indelicate custom of
greasing their bodies, and their being so much exposed to the air and
sun even from infancy, may cause that total change of complexion, which
I know not how otherwise to account for: their hair is black and
shining, the women's very long, parted at the top, and combed back,
tied behind, and often twisted with a thong of leather, which they
think very ornamental: the dress of both sexes is a close jacket,
reaching to their knees, with spatterdashes, all of coarse blue cloth,
shoes of deer-skin, embroidered with porcupine quills, and som