English have done since their going thither has been only to make some
of these native pleasures more scarce, by an inordinate and unseasonable
use of them; hardly making improvements equivalent to that damage.

I shall in the next book give an account of the Indians themselves,
their religion, laws and customs; that so both the country and its
primitive inhabitants may be considered together in that original state
of nature in which the English found them. Afterwards I will treat of
the present state of the English there, and the alterations, I can't
call them improvements, they have made at this day.

BOOK III.

OF THE INDIANS, THEIR RELIGION, LAWS AND CUSTOMS, IN WAR AND PEACE.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE INDIANS AND THEIR DRESS.

Sec. 1. The Indians are of the middling and largest stature of the English.
They are straight and well proportioned, having the cleanest and most
exact limbs in the world. They are so perfect in their outward frame,
that I never heard of one single Indian that was either dwarfish,
crooked, bandy-legged, or otherwise misshapen. But if they have any such
practice among them as the Romans had, of exposing such children till
they died, as were weak and misshapen at their birth, they are very shy
of confessing it, and I could never yet learn that they had.

Their color, when they are grown up, is a chestnut brown and tawny; but
much clearer in their infancy. Their skin comes afterwards to harden and
grow blacker by greasing and sunning themselves. They have generally
coal black hair, and very black eyes, which are most commonly graced
with that sort of squint which many of the Jews are observed to have.
Their women are generally beautiful, possessing shape and features
agreeable enough, and wanting no charm but that of education and a fair
complexion.

Sec. 2. The men wear their hair cut after several fanciful fashions,
sometimes greased, and sometimes painted. The great men, or better sort,
preserve a long lock behind for distinction. They pull their beards up
by the roots with musselshells, and both men and women do the same by
the other parts of their body for cleanliness sake. The women wear the
hair of the head very long, either hanging at their backs, or brought
before in a single lock, bound up with a fillet of peak, or beads;
sometimes also they wear it neatly tied up in a knot behind. It is
commonly greased, and shining black, but never painted.

The people of condition,