The following present-day characteristics are noted: The Indian maintains a better average as to height than his white brother, say at about 5 ft. 8-1/2 in. He is straight and is rarely "bowlegged." The Indian would appear to be built more for fleetness than for strength; litheness and agility are with him, marked characteristics. The dignity of chief among the Indians is attained upon the principle of heredity succession. In case of the death of a chief, this did not necessarily devolve upon the next of kin. The naming of his successor with the privilege of determining whether or not he fulfills, in point of character and capacity, the qualifications requisite to maintain worthily the position, is confided to the women of the dead chief's family, whose tribe has been deprived of one of its heads. They are given a wide latitude in choosing; so long as they recognize through their appointment the governing, basic theory of kinship to the deceased ruler, their nomination will be unreservedly approved.
The chiefs are looked upon as the fathers of the tribe. In the earlier days when the demon of war was about, wisdom and bravery were the chief requisites.
Oratory is still of supreme importance with the modern Indian. In this he is well equipped with a deep, powerful voice of rare volume and resonance. He has great facility of gesture and marvelous control of facial expression, which becomes the index of his emotions--a perfect mirror of his imaginative soul. It is no wonder then that, we hear of chiefs and orators of old haranguing for hours, for, even today, the undivided, keen attention bestowed on an orator, the unflagging interest evinced, the genuine and sympathetic appreciation his more ambitious flights evoke, the liberal applause exhorted by periods, when denunciation, scorn, or other strong mood that may possess the speaker is expressed--periods at which he has been aroused to withering, or flaming invective--all make us vividly realize the powerful oratory of their predecessors. The contemplative and esthetic bent of the Indian, living amidst nature's simplicities and deeply impressed by them, overflowed in the similes and metaphors of his speech. There is no doubt of his rightful claim to eloquence. The present-day Christian Indian "believes vaguely in the existence of a Supreme Being, though his idea of that Being's benignity and consideration relates solely to an earthly oversight of him, a parental concern for his daily wants. His conception of future happiness is wholly sensual--bound up, in many cases, with the theories of an unrestrained indulgence of animal appetite, and a whole-souled abandonment to riotous diversion. That estimate of an hereafter, which has gained his unreserved, his heartfelt approbation--one, in the more complete idealizing of which these coarser fancies constitute familiar adjuvants--adopts for cardinal, for constant factor, his thoroughgoing addiction, in some renovated state of being, to pastimes found congenial and appeasing in life--their undisturbed enthroning, as it were. Joyously, anticipation clings to a haunt delectable--happily and charmingly contrived to embosom spacious parks immure seductive coverts; refreshed soothingly his spirits by dreams of illimitable, virgin preserves, which should be stocked with unnumbered game, and where--equipped to perfection for the chase--he should plunge with satiety into its vehement pursuit."