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

  • George Catlin
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    tionate estimates of deaths before and between certain ages; but from verbal estimates given me by the Chiefs and Medical Men in the various tribes, and whose statements may in general be relied on as very near the truth, there is no doubt but I have been able to obtain information on these points which may safely be relied on as a just average of the premature mor- tality in many of those Tribes, and which we have a right to believe would be found to be much the same in most of the others. As to the melancholy proportions of deaths of children in civilized communities already given, there is certainly no parallel to it to be found amongst the North or South American Trines, where they are living according to their primitive modes ; nor do I believe that a similar mortality can be found amongst the children of any aboriginal race on any part of the globe. Amongst the North American Indians, at all events, where two or three children are generally the utmost results of a marriage, such a rate of mortality could not exist without soon depopulating the country; and as a justification of the general remark I have made, the few following instances of the numerous estimates which I received and recorded amongst the various tribes, I offer in the belief that they will be received as matters for astonishment, calling for some explanation of the