summercomfort | Chin pokes

I was doing a bit of reading about Eastern Algonqians for my Squanto comic -- it's actually pretty hard to find information about what culture was like before European contact, mostly because there's no records. So a lot of what we know is based off of first contact accounts, which are generally biased more in the "I don't know anything about these people and I want to learn" way rather than the "omg they're such noble savages" way. So I got this book called Indian New England, 1524-1674: A Compendium of Eyewitness Accounts of Native American Life

But anyway, came across this choice passage describing Indian appearances:

"As for their persons they are tall and handsome timbered people, out-wristed, pale and lean, Tartarian-visaged, black-eyed (which is accounted the strongest for sight), and generally black-haired, both smooth and curled wearing of it long. No beards, or very rarely; their teeth are very white, short, and even: they account them the most necessary and best parts of man. And as the Austrians are known by their great lips, the Bavarians by their pokes under their chins, the Jews by their goggle eyes, so the Indians by their flat noses; yet are they not so much depressed as they are to the southward"

By John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New England, published 1674, describing Indians of coastal Maine. He was in New England 1638 and 1663-1671.

There are so many choice things going on in this passage! I'll leave it for you to enjoy its finer points. :D