e
leading authority on the Indians of the Southwest, writes regarding
the Pueblos (one of the most advanced, of all American tribes):

"Chastity was an act of penitence; to be chaste
signified to do penance. Still, after a woman had once
become linked to a man by the performance of certain
simple rites it was unsafe for her to be caught
trespassing, and her accomplice also suffered a
penalty. But there was the utmost liberty, even
license, as toward girls. Intercourse was almost
promiscuous with members of the tribe. Toward outsiders
the strictest abstinence was observed, and this fact,
which has long been overlooked or misunderstood,
explains the prevailing idea that before the coming of
the white man the Indians were both chaste and moral,
while the contrary is the truth."

Lewis and Clarke travelled a century ago among Indians that had never
been visited by whites. Their observations regarding immoral practices
and the means used to obviate the consequences bear out the above
testimony. M'Lean (II., 59, 120) also ridicules the idea that Indians
were corrupted by the whites. But the most conclusive proof of
aboriginal depravity is that supplied by the discoverers of America,
including Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus on his fourth voyage
touched the mainland going down near Brazil. In Cariay, he
writes,[203] the enchanters

"sent me immediately two girls very showily dressed.
The elder could not be more than eleven years of age
and the other seven, and both exhibited so much
immodesty that more could not be expected from public
women."

On another page (30) he writes: "The habits of these Caribbees are
brutal," adding that in their attacks on neighboring islands they
carry off as many women as they can, using them as concubines. "These
women also say that the Caribbees use them with such cruelty as would
scarcely be believed; and that they eat the children which they bear
to them."

Brazil was visited in 1501 by Amerigo Vespucci. The account he gives
of the dissolute practices of the natives, who certainly had never set
eye on a white man, is so plain spoken that it cannot be quoted here
in full. "They are not very jealous," he says, "and are immoderately
libidinous, and the women much more so than the men, so that for
decency I omit to tell you the ... They are so void of affection and
cruel that if they be angr