Thus Arrayed, Their Hair Besmeared With Fish Oil, And Their
Bodies Bedaubed With Red Clay, They Considered Themselves
Irresistible.
When on warlike expeditions, they painted their faces and bodies
in the most hideous and grotesque manner, according to the
universal practice of American savages.
Their arms were bows and
arrows, spears, and war clubs. Some wore a corselet of pieces of
hard wood laced together with bear grass, so as to form a light
coat of mail, pliant to the body; and a kind of casque of cedar
bark, leather, and bear grass, sufficient to protect the head
from an arrow or war club. A more complete article of defensive
armor was a buff jerkin or shirt of great thickness, made of
doublings of elk skin, and reaching to the feet, holes being left
for the head and arms. This was perfectly arrowproof; add to
which, it was often endowed with charmed virtues, by the spells
and mystic ceremonials of the medicine man, or conjurer.
Of the peculiar custom, prevalent among these people, of
flattening the head, we have already spoken. It is one of those
instances of human caprice, like the crippling of the feet of
females in China, which are quite incomprehensible. This custom
prevails principally among the tribes on the sea-coast, and about
the lower parts of the rivers. How far it extends along the coast
we are not able to ascertain. Some of the tribes, both north and
south of the Columbia, practice it; but they all speak the
Chinook language, and probably originated from the same stock.
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