This is a mixture of Chin[-u]k, English, French,
Chinese, and Hawaaian.]
All these tribes, of course, varied very much in personal appearance,
though not in disposition. The vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland are
described as having been a good-looking tall people, with large black
eyes and a skin so light, when washed free from dirt or paint, that
the Portuguese compared them to gipsies; and the writer of Fabian's
_Chronicle_, who saw two of them (brought back by Cabot) at Henry
VII's Court, in 1499, took them for Englishmen when they were dressed
in English clothes. It was these people--subsequently killed out by
the British settlers on Newfoundland--who originated the term "Red
Indians", or, in French, _Peaux Rouges_, because their skins, like
those of so many other Amerindians, were painted with red ochre.
Many of the British Columbian peoples made themselves artificially
ugly by flattening the sides of the head. To press the skull whilst it
was soft, they squeezed the heads of their children between boards;
others, such as the warlike tribes of the upper Missouri, had a
passion for submitting themselves to mutilation by the medicine man of
the clan, in order to please the sun god. Such would submit to large
strips being cut from the flesh of their shoulders, arms, or legs, or
having their cheeks slashed.
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