The History of the Conquest of Canada. George Warburton. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: George Warburton
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wild state, but in those districts where the restraints of law are felt, an extraordinary number of blind, deaf, dwarfs, and cripples, are observed. The terrible custom among the savage tribes of destroying those children who do not promise a vigorous growth, accounts for this apparent anomaly. Infancy is so long and helpless that it weighs as a heavy burden upon a wandering people; food is scanty and uncertain of supply, hunters and their families must range over extensive countries, and often remove from place to place. Judging that children of feeble or defective formation are not likely to survive the hardships of this errant life, they destroy all such unpromising offspring,[237] or desert them to a slower and more dreadful fate. The lot of all is so hard that few born with any great constitutional defect could long survive, and arrive at maturity.

      In the simplicity of savage life, where labor does not oppress, nor luxury enervate the human frame, and where harassing cares are unknown, we are led to expect that disease and suffering should be comparatively rare, and that the functions of nature should not reach the close of their gradual decay till an extreme old age. The decrepit and shriveled forms of many American Indians would seem to indicate that they had long passed the ordinary time of life. But it is difficult or impossible to ascertain their exact age, as the art of counting is generally unknown among them, and they are strangely forgetful and indifferent to the past. Their longevity, however, varies considerably, according to differences of climate and habits of life. These children of nature are naturally free from many of the diseases afflicting civilized nations; they have not even names in their language to distinguish such ills, the offspring of a luxury to them unknown. The diseases of the savage, however, though few, are violent and fatal; the severe hardships of his mode of life produce maladies of a dangerous description. From improvidence they are often reduced for a considerable time to a state bordering on starvation. When successful in the chase, or in the seasons when earth supplies her bounty, they indulge in enormous excesses. These extremes of want and abundance prove equally pernicious, for, although habit and necessity enable them at the time to tolerate such sudden transitions, the constitution is ultimately injured: disorders arising from these causes strike down numbers in the prime and vigor of youth, and are so common that they appear the necessary consequences of their mode of life. The Indian is likewise peculiarly subject to consumption, pleurisy, asthma, and paralysis, engendered by the fatigues and hardships of the chase and war, and constant exposure to extremes of heat and cold. Experience supports the conclusion that the average life is greater among people in an advanced condition of society than among those in a state of nature; among savages, all are affected by circumstances of over-exertion, privation, and excess, but in civilized societies the diseases of luxury only affect the few.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [200] "Driven by the European populations toward the northwest of North America,[201] the savage tribes are returning, by a singular destiny, to expire on the same shore where they landed, in unknown ages, to take possession of America. In the Iroquois language, the Indians gave themselves the appellation of Men of Always (Ongoueonoue); these men of always have passed away, and the stranger will soon have left to the lawful heirs of a whole world nothing but the mold of their graves."—Chateaubriand's Travels in America (Eng. trans.), vol. ii., p. 93.

      "It can not be doubted that the greater part of the nations of America belong to a race of men who, isolated ever since the infancy of the world from the rest of mankind, exhibit in the nature and diversity of language, in their features, and the conformation of their skull, incontestable proofs of an early and complete civilization."—Ibid., vol. i., p. 250.

      On the American races in general, Humboldt refers to the beautiful work of Samuel George Morton, Craniæ Americanæ, 1839, p. 62–86; and an account of the skulls brought by Pentland from the Highlands of Titicaca, in the 'Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science,' vol. v., p. 475, 1834; also, Alcide d'Orbigny, L'Homme Américain considéré sous ses Rapports Physiol. et Mor., p. 221, 1839; and, further, the work, so full of delicate ethnographical observations, of Prinz Maximilian of Wied, Reise in das Innere von Nordamerika, 1839.