OCR Text |
Show SLASSIFICATION OP INDIANS 91 linguistic, and cultural groups do not corr( rica *& and the overlapping of stocks determined byt pre-criteria is an unavoidable complication. B verb The physical characteristics of the America!* any are diflBcult to formulate in general terms, tfngle Indian is, however, as a rule, of fairly high statist five feet eight or ten inches, though undersized ip certain groups, notably in the far north and in th£ exIxemjgJESSi. On the other hand, he has a very v tall stature, < si2LJ£ e£_ a£-£ yer, in some groups, such as the prairi § __& ibe& jpf North America, and certain peoples of the Amazon basin and of Patagonia in the southern continent. The hair is almost invariably black, coarse, long, x and straight on the head, and scanty on the face and body. The smooth face of the male Indian is often due, however, to the almost universal practice of extracting the beard by the roots. The color of the skin is of all shades of brown, ranging from a relatively dark complexion in the uplands to a light yellowish in certain woodland stocks. The so- called " Red Indian" does not exist. The early observers saw Indians painted red, and perhaps a reddish tone was present in the skin of the eastern woodland stocks with which European immigrants first came into contact. In the vast majority of the Indians no such tint is discernible. The shape of the skull is neither decidedly dolichocephalic nor brachycephalic except in special extreme instances, but in general is of the |