ba hills, and work it
themselves into bracelets, armlets, diadems, as well as bits for their
horses, and ornaments to their saddles. Like all the Shoshones' tribe,
they are most elegant horsemen, and by dint of caresses and good
treatment, render the animals so familiar and attached to them, that I
have often seen some of them following their masters like dogs, licking
their hands and shoulders. The Comanche young women are exquisitely
clean, good-looking, and but slightly bronzed; indeed the Spaniards of
Andalusia and the Calabrians are darker than they are. Their voice is
soft, their motions dignified and graceful; their eyes dark and
flashing, when excited, but otherwise mild, with a soft tinge of
melancholy. The only fault to be found in them is that they are
inclined to be too stout, arising from their not taking exercise.

The Comanches, like all the tribes of the Shoshone breed, are generous
and liberal to excess. You can take what you please from the wigwam--
horses, skins, rich furs, gold, anything, in fact, except their arms and
their females, whom they love fondly. Yet they are not jealous; they
are too conscious of their own superiority to fear anything, and
besides, they respect too much the weaker sex to harbour any injurious
suspicion. It is a very remarkable fact, that all the tribes who claim
any affinity with the Shoshones, the Apaches, the Comanches, and the
Pawnies Loups, have always rejected with scorn any kind of spirits when
offered to them by the traders. They say that "Shoba-wapo" (the
fire-water) is the greatest enemy of the Indian race, and that the
Yankees, too cowardly to fight the Indians as men, have invented this
terrible poison to destroy them without danger.

"We hated once the Spaniards and the Watchinangoes (Mexicans)," they
say, "but they were honourable men compared with the thieves of Texas.
The few among the Spanish race who would fight, did so as warriors; and
they had laws among them which punished with death those who would give
or sell this poison to the Indians."

The consequence of this abstinence from spirits is, that these Western
nations improve and increase rapidly; while, on the contrary, the
Eastern tribes, in close contact with the Yankees, gradually disappear.
The Sioux, the Osage, the Winnebego, and other Eastern tribes, are very
cruel in disposition; they show no mercy, and consider every means fair,
however treacherous, to conquer an enemy. Not so with