I saw this operation performd on the 5th of July on the buttocks of a girl about 14 years of age; for some time she bore it with great resolution but afterwards began to complain and in a little time grew so outrageous that all the threats and force her freinds could use could hardly oblige her [to] indure it. I had occasion to remain in an adjoining house an hour at least after this operation began and yet went away before it was finished, tho this was the blacking of only one side of her buttocks the other having been done some weeks before.

It is done between the ages of 14 and 18 and so essential it is that I have never seen one single person of years of maturity without it. What can be a sufficient inducement to suffer so much pain is difficult to say; not one Indian (tho I have askd hundreds) would ever give me the least reason for it; possibly superstition may have something to do with it, nothing else in my opinion could be a sufficient cause for so apparently absurd a custom. As for the smaller marks on the fingers, arms &c they may be intended

Voyaging Accounts