1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

by Charles C. Mann

And the hair! As a rule, young men wore it long on one side, in an equine mane, but cropped the other side short, which prevented it from getting tangled in their bow strings. But sometimes they cut their hair into such wild patterns that attempting to imitate them, Wood sniffed, “would torture the wits of a curious barber.” Tonsures, pigtails, head completely shaved but for a single forelock, long sides drawn into a queue with a raffish short-cut roach in the middle—all of it was prideful and abhorrent to the Pilgrims. (Not everyone in England saw it that way. Inspired by asymmetrical Indian coiffures, seventeenth-century London blades wore long, loose hanks of hair known as “lovelocks.” The imitation was entirely appropriate; much as European gentlemen took care to announce themselves in wigs and flamboyantly colored silk suits, Indian blades wore their hair and tattoos to proclaim their status as men of import and style.) As for the Indians, evidence suggests that they tended to view Europeans with disdain as soon as they got to know them. The Wendat (Huron) in Ontario, a chagrined missionary reported, thought the French possessed “little intelligence in comparison to themselves.” Europeans, Indians told other Indians, were physically weak, sexually untrustworthy, atrociously ugly, and just plain smelly. (The British and French, many of whom had not taken a bath in their entire lives, were amazed by the Indian interest in personal cleanliness.) A Jesuit reported that th...