Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin.

  • George Catlin
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/114 (page 7)
    accounts which have been published, of the excessive mortality amongst the Savage Races of America, lead- ing the world to believe that the actual premature waste of life caused by the dissipations and vices introduced, with the accompanying changes in the modes of living in such districts, were the proper statistics of those people. I have visited these semi-civilized degradations of Savage life in every degree of latitude in North America, and to a great extent also in Central and South America, and as far as this system extends, I agree with those writers who have contended in general terms, that pre- mature mortality is proportionally greater amongst the Native Races than in Civilized communities; but as I have also extended my visits and my inquiries into the tribes in the same latitudes, living in their primitive state, and practising their native modes, I offer myself 0> as a living witness, that whilst in that condition, the Native Races in North and South America are a healthier people, and less subject to premature mortality (save from the accidents of War and the Chase, and * also from Small-pox and other pestilential diseases in- troduced amongst them), than any Civilized Race in existence. Amongst a people who preserve no Records and gather no Statistics, it has been impossible to obtain exact accounts of their annual deaths, or strict propor-