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.
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