[
266]
family no one would offer hinderance, ‘thus confessing
the sweetness of their homes.’
They love society, and the joining together of houses and towns.
With
long poles fixed in the ground, and bent towards each other at the top, covered with birch or chestnut bark, and hung on the inside with embroidered mats, having no door but a loose skin, no hearth but the ground, no chimney but an opening in the roof, the wigwam is quickly constructed and easily removed.
Its size, whether it be round or oblong, is in proportion to the number of families that are to dwell together; and there, in one smoky cell, the whole clan-men, children,
and women—are huddled together, careless of cleanli-
ness, and making no privacy of actions of which some irrational animals seem ashamed.
As the languages of the
American tribes were limited by the material world, so, in private life, the senses held dominion.
The passion of the savage was liberty; he demanded license to gratify his animal instincts.
To act out himself, to follow the propensities of his nature, seemed his system of morals.
The supremacy of conscience, the rights of reason, were not subjects of reflection to those who had no name for continence.
The idea of chastity, as a social duty, was but feebly developed among them; and the observer of their customs would, at first, believe them to have been ignorant of restraint.
If ‘the kindly flames of nature burned in wild humanity,’ their love never became a frenzy or a devotion; for indulgence destroyed its energy and its purity.
And yet no nation has ever been found without some practical confession of the duty of self-denial.
‘God hath planted in the hearts of the wildest of the
sonnes of men a high and honorable esteem of the marriage ’
