Des vices et des maladies qui résultent chez les peuples d’espèce cuivrée, du nord de l’Amérique, de

CHAP. 17: > Of the vices and diseases that result among the peoples of the copper-colored species, of the north of America, from their social relations, their lack of intellectual development, and the physical circumstances in the midst of which they are placed.

The relations that exist among these peoples, whether from individual to individual, or from horde to horde, largely determine their private morals. Enjoying no kind of security, for the few goods they possess, or even for their lives, their entire existence is always concentrated in the present moment. Thus, although they have often experienced scarcities, they never seek to prevent them. Whatever the abundance in which they find themselves, they never go to bed without having consumed everything, if that is possible for them [459]. If they are obliged to leave something, they get up in the night to eat, unless they have placed their food within their reach, for then they eat lying down [460]. When their stomach, no longer able to contain food, rejects a part of it, they set to drinking and eating again [461]. Those who have a passion for strong liquors, and who can procure them, use them for drink as for other foods; hence the disorders of which I have previously spoken [462].

The same cause that determines them to consume as much food as they possess, prevents them from taking the slightest trouble to procure new food, when they are not pressed by present need. If, after having taken a certain quantity of fish, they have again cast their nets, they do not go to visit them until all their provisions have been consumed; they thus let rot the fish of which they could have made a provision [463]. In their excursions, they destroy, without utility, everything that is found on their path and that could be useful to other men; if they perceive a bird's nest, however small it may be, they break its eggs or crush its young, uncertain whether they will ever pass in the same place, or whether they will lack food [464]. This indifference to the future is sufficient to explain how, with a harsh and egoistical character, they can nevertheless show themselves to be generous or hospitable when they find themselves in abundance [465].

When hunger presses them or a violent passion agitates them, these men are active and energetic; but, when they are sated and have no vengeance to satisfy, they abandon themselves to laziness: none of them would want to take a trouble from which he would not have the certainty of reaping the fruits. Those who inhabit the most rigorous climates are as indolent and as lazy as those who live under the torrid zone [466]. The Chipewyans, whose country is covered with snow for nine months, prefer sleep to any kind of games and exercises [467]. The inhabitants of upper Canada have the same penchant for laziness; and the labors that inspire in them the most antipathy are those that suppose the most foresight and security, such as agriculture: in their eyes, such labors are unworthy of a warrior [468]. The peoples highest in the northwest, and those who inhabit California, have a similar aversion for work. The former, idle for the greater part of the day, satisfy the need for activity that seems inherent in the nature of man only by spending almost all their time at games [469]. The latter spend entire days lying on their bellies, stretched out in the sand, when it is heated by the reverberation of the sun's rays [470].

Men who have an aversion for any occupation that is not rigorously necessary for living cannot give themselves the care that cleanliness requires. Thus, there are none filthier than those who inhabit the coldest regions of America: the same filth is found in their clothing, in their food, and in their huts. These peoples cover themselves, in general, either with crudely tanned skins, or with coarse cloths that they have procured by exchanges; but, whatever the nature of their clothing, they never wash it, and do not take it off until it goes to rags and falls from rot. Accustomed to painting themselves with various colors, to smearing their hair, face, and often all parts of their body with grease or fish oil, and the rigor of the climate under which they live not permitting them to plunge into water, their exterior is dirty and disgusting; the stench they exhale is so repulsive that it does not permit one to approach within several paces of them [471]. Children, wrapped in moss, are so little cared for, with respect to cleanliness, that they bear on their bodies, for the rest of their lives, the scars of the excoriations that were produced by the filth [472].

They put no more care into the preparation of their food than into the maintenance of their clothing: we have seen previously that they eat the most disgusting objects, like the vermin that covers them or that attaches to the skin of animals, the skins of which they have made their shoes or their clothing; they never clean the vessels in which they prepare their food, and whatever the nature of the filth that mixes with it, it inspires in them no repugnance; a man who would believe himself dishonored if he drank from the cup from which his wife has drunk, eats without difficulty from the dirtiest vessel that has served for his dog's meal [473].

But it is especially in the interior of their huts that the most disgusting and most hideous filth is shown. They gut their fish there, whose entrails mix with the bones and fragments that are the result of meals, and with other refuse; and they do not remove them until the quantity has become so considerable that it prevents walking. If they have needs to satisfy, they never move two steps away, and seek neither shade nor mystery. Finally, their dwellings are of such filthiness and such a stench that they cannot be compared to the den of any known animal [474].

In the midst of their idleness, these peoples are agitated by a violent passion, that of games of chance: they give themselves over to it with a fury of which one would find few examples among civilized peoples. They sometimes play for several days and several nights in a row, and neither the fear of losing what they possess, nor the solicitations of their wives, can tear them away from their game. When they have lost all that they possess, they often offer to gamble themselves. This love of gambling is among them one of the principal sources of their quarrels and their violence: when they give themselves over to it, they become noisy, rapacious, angry, and almost frenetic [475].

Among civilized peoples, the life of each is, in general, uniform and regular: one consumes every day nearly the same quantity of food; one gives oneself over to the same exercises or the same labors. By varying one's clothing, or by other means, the temperature in which one is placed changes as little as possible: one protects oneself from humidity, as from an excess of dryness. Finally, one enjoys security almost always. But this uniformity, so favorable to the development and conservation of human forces, does not exist for the uncivilized natives of America, nor for any other barbarous people. Among such peoples all the members of which each horde is composed pass rapidly from one extreme to the other: they pass alternately from scarcity to abundance and to indigestions; from an excess of fatigue to an absolute idleness; from an excess of heat to an excess of cold; from an excessive exaltation to a complete dejection. These alternatives, joined to the bad foods on which they often nourish themselves, to the bad air they breathe in their huts, to the humidity in which they live in rainy times, to the excesses to which the women give themselves over from their childhood, and to the continual alarms that their enemies inspire in them, alter their constitution, and cause them a great number of diseases.

Children are exposed to a multitude of ills unknown among civilized peoples. The regimen to which they are subjected as long as they cannot run; the bark in which they are long tied without being able to move, and the manure in which they wallow, cause them excessive pains, and are for them a kind of torture from which they are delivered only toward their third or fourth year; their sufferings are manifested by their weakness, their thinness, and hernias; only those who bring into the world the most vigorous constitution can resist it [476].

Among the tribes that inhabit the most rigorous climates, most of the men, women, and children are covered with scabies, skin diseases, purulent pimples, or afflicted with scorbutic affections; these diseases reach the highest degree of intensity [477]; a great number have their stomachs degraded by long abstinences or frequent indigestions [478]; the abrupt passages from one temperature to another give them chest diseases that are almost always fatal, or rheumatisms that render them crippled [479]; the glare of the snow, the smoke that envelops them in their huts, or other causes, spoil their sight, and make ophthalmia common among them [480]; they are subject, in a word, to most of the diseases that are observed among civilized peoples; but, as the sick are not cared for, as they observe no regimen, nor employ any remedy, it is rare that they recover from them [481].

But it is especially epidemic diseases that cause great ravages among these peoples. Knowing neither how to protect themselves from them, nor how to treat them, it is rare that they are not all afflicted by them, and that they do not carry off the greater part of the population. Sometimes tribes disappear; and one finds no other traces of their existence than the bones scattered in the places their villages occupied [482]. The picture that Mackenzie has drawn of a tribe afflicted by smallpox can give an idea of the ills that these peoples experience when an epidemic spreads among them.

“Smallpox,” he says, “spread its ravages among them with as much rapidity as flame consumes the dry grass of the fields. They could neither flee its attacks, nor resist the cruel effects of its poison: it caused entire families and tribes to perish. What a horrible spectacle for those who were then in this country! It offered on all sides only unfortunate people ready to expire next to the corpses of their relatives and friends, and desperate men, who, in order not to become the prey of the contagion, took the dreadful course of giving themselves death.

“The unfortunate habit that these improvident peoples have of never thinking of the needs of the morrow greatly increased the ills that smallpox made them suffer. They were deprived not only of remedies against this evil, but of every other kind of relief, and they had to oppose to the scarcity only fury and a vain despair. To complete this horrible picture, I will add that a part of the corpses was dragged out of the huts by the wolves, which this prey seemed to render even more ferocious, while the rest was devoured in the huts themselves by the famished dogs.

“One often saw the father of a family whom the contagion still spared, call his children around him to make them contemplate their relatives or their friends whose frightful state he attributed to some evil spirit who wanted to exterminate their race. Then he exhorted them to brave the horrors of death, and to employ the help of their dagger to end their own existence. If they did not have the courage to follow such a sad counsel, he slaughtered them himself, believing he was giving them a last mark of affection; and, then turning his blade against his own breast, he hastened to take his own life to go and join them in the abode where one is sheltered from the ills that afflict humanity [483].”The sufferings inseparable from the state of barbarism in which these peoples live, make them serious and grave. Several know neither song nor dance; those who possess a certain kind of music have only a lugubrious and melancholic song. If they enter a hut, they neither greet nor look at anyone: they squat in the first place that presents itself, light their pipe, and smoke without saying a single word; if they are questioned, their response is concise and almost monosyllabic [484]. The questions they ask one another, when they meet after a few days’ absence, have for their object to know the misfortunes that have befallen them; the friends or relatives they have lost, the scarcities or famines they have experienced [485]. Death is in itself an accident so little to be feared, that they often consider it a happy event: they see in it only the end of their miseries; thus it is not rare for them to take their own lives [486]*.

The horrible torments they inflict on their prisoners are caused only by the opinion they hold that a death not accompanied by pain is a good rather than an evil.

“When the Europeans,” says Lahontan, “presume to reproach these savages for their ferocity, they answer you coldly that life is nothing; that one does not take revenge on one's enemies by slitting their throats, but by making them suffer long, harsh, and acute torments; and that, if there were only death to fear in wars, women would wage them as freely as men [487].”

The state of suffering is for them so habitual, and their imagination is so familiarized with the most atrocious pains, that they endure, without complaining or even while inciting their executioners, the longest and most horrible tortures that their enemies can invent [488].

Under the harsh climates of Canada, the savages are pursued, in times of scarcity, by the image of calamities, even in their sleep.

“They dream,” says Raynal, “that they are surrounded by enemies; they see their surprised village swimming in blood; they receive outrages, wounds; their wives, their children, their friends are taken from them. Upon waking, they take these visions for a warning from the gods; and the fear that this opinion places in their soul adds to their ferocity by the melancholy with which it tints all their ideas and their somber gazes [489].”

However, however miserable the state of these peoples may be, however profound their debasement on the scale of civilization, they have a fierce, indomitable pride. They believe themselves to be a superior race, and imagine they do a European much honor by treating him as an equal. The Iroquois, says Hennepin, call themselves men par excellence, as if all other nations were but beasts in their regard. The Cherokees are so filled with the idea of their superiority that they call Europeans Nothings, or the cursed race, and call themselves the beloved people [490]. The Eskimos, like the Iroquois, appear to consider themselves almost exclusively as men; they designate Europeans only by the contemptuous qualification of barbarians [491]**.

Pride, vengeance, and perfidy, and the fears they mutually inspire, give them a quality that one would be little disposed to seek among such peoples: it is politeness. They never contradict a person who speaks to them; however absurd the discourse held to them may appear, they answer, that is good, you are right, my brother; but they also demand from others the same deference they grant them. They are, according to Volney, as reserved and as polite as the members of a diplomatic corps: a lack of regard, a violation of etiquette, could have among them consequences no less terrible than among the peoples most attached to the point of honor [492].

The numerous tribes that are spread over the vast continent of America have so much resemblance among themselves that at first glance they almost all appear to belong to the same family. This resemblance exists not only in the color and in most of the traits of their physical character; it is also remarked in their morals: one finds everywhere more or less the same qualities and the same vices. The principal moral differences that exist among them are found, not in the nature of their passions, but in the greater or lesser force with which these passions manifest themselves. These are, moreover, the same differences that one observes between the most barbarous horde and the most civilized nation; on both sides one finds pride, falsehood, harshness, vengeance, laziness, improvidence, the passion for gambling; on both sides one finds friendship, courage, love for one's children, patriotism; but on both sides all these passions do not have the same energy: in the state of barbarism it is the malevolent or antisocial passions that affect the greater part of the population and are the most energetic. In the state of civilization, on the contrary, these passions are the weakest and affect only the small number, while it is the social affections that dominate [493].