Viewing page 60 of 130

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

174
And from carefully observing him during the greater portion of that time I received the most perfect conviction that, if the Anglo-American, and the indian were placed from infancy in the same state of society, in this climate which is common to them both, the principal differences which now subsist between the two races, would, in great measure, be removed when they should arrive at the period of puberty. This young savage had been too far advanced in the habits of his people, before he was introduced into civil society, to render the experiment compleat: for, all impressions received in the tender and pliant state of the human constitution before the age of seven years, or, at the utmost, of nine or ten, are usually more deep and permanent than those made in any future, and equal period of life. A perceptible difference still existed, at the time of his return to his tribe, between him and his fellow students, in the largeness of the mouth and thickness of the lips, in the elevation of the check bone, in the darkness of the complexion, and the contour of the face, These differences had sensibly diminished from the period of his coming to the college : and they appeared to be diminishing the faster in proportion as he lost that vacancy, and lugubrious wildness of countenance peculiar to the savage state, and began to acquire the agreeable expression of civil life. The expression of the eye, and the softening of the features in consequence of new ideas and emotions, which had taken birth since he came into society, removed the chief distinction, except that of the complexion, which had been visible originally between him and his companions. Less difference existed at length between his features and those of his fellow students than we often see between persons of the same nation.* After careful and minute attention, and comparing each feature with the correspondent feature in many of his companions, the difference was very small, and sometimes hardly perceptive ; and yet there was an ob-

*The complexion of this young lad was not of so dark a copper as that of his native stock, which could be easily discerned by the stain of blushing in his cheek which is never perceived in those dark coloured tribes. The difference of these effects, however, in them and in him, I ascribe rather to the pains used by those savages to increase the darkness of their natural hue by filthy paints, and other means, than to any influence in the change of his manner of living to remove any of the natural shades of the indian colour. But he adding nothing to them, while the savages, by their exposure to the injuries of the weather, and the hardships of their state, with other causes which have been mentioned, are continually increasing them.