hem 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 the Indians to the
west of the Rocky Mountains. They have a spirit of chivalry, which
prevents them taking any injurious advantage.

As I have before observed, an Indian will never fire his rifle upon an
enemy who is armed only with his lance, bow, and arrows; or if he does,
and kills him, he will not take his scalp, as it would