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TEXAS INDIAN PAPERS, 1846-1859
wove into an immense hood. The hair is often besmeared with a dusky-reddish clay; and horse-hair, cow-tails, or any other analogous material, is attached to the conglomerate mass, until the huge compound cue will descend to the heels of the wearer. They wear arm-bands, from one to ten or more on each arm, made of brass wire, about the size of a goose-quill : nose-pieces, of shell, or bone, or silver, attached to the division-cartilage; and ear-pendants, of strung-beads or any thing they fancy and can procure. They know nothing of the origin of these customs of the costume, and understand as little of any sensible reason for them, as the more civilized dandy does, of the rationale of his change!ul fancies of the toilet, which are sometimes equally as ridiculous and diverse from the simplicity and the symmetry of nature. Their actual war-dress approaches to absolute nudity. When about to attack an enemy, which they always do on horse- back, they disrobe themselves of every thing but the breech- cloth and moccasins. Their saddles are light, with high pom- mels and cantlins; and they never encumber their horses with useless trappings. The women are held in small estimation; they are "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to their indolent and supercil- ious lords. But this is common to all people, on whom the or- acles of truth have never shed their humanizing influence. The women, married and single, pay much less attention to personal adornment than the men, and appear, in the degradation of their social condition, to have retained but little self-respect. They are disgustingly filthy in their persons, and seemingly as debased in their moral as in their physical constitution. They are decidedly more ferocious and cruel to prisoners than the men, among whom I have sometimes witnessed a gleaming of a kind and benevolent nature. It is an ancient custom to surrender a prisoner to the women, for torture, for the first three days of his arrival among them. These fiends stake out the unhappy victim by day, that is, fasten him on his back to the ground, with his limbs distended by cords and stakes. At evening, he is released and taken to the dance, where he is placed in the centre of a living circle, formed by the dense mass of his tormentors, and made to dance and sing, while the furies of the inner line beat him with sticks and thongs of raw-hide, with great diligence and glee, until their own exertions induce fa- tigue; when he is remanded to his ground-prison, to abide a series of small vexations during the coming day, and a repetition of
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