" Belden found that the squaws were valued "only
for their strength and ability to work, and no account whatever is
taken of their personal beauty," etc., etc. Nor can the fact that
savages kill deformed children be taken as an indication of a regard
for personal beauty. Such children are put out of the way for the
simple reason that they may not become a burden to the family or the
tribe.
Advocates of the sexual selection theory make much ado over the fact
that in all countries the natives prefer their own peculiar color and
features--black, red, or yellow, flat noses, high cheek bones, thick
lips, etc.--and dislike what we consider beautiful. But the likes of
these races regarding personal appearance have no more to do with a
sense of beauty than their dislikes. It is merely a question of habit.
They like their own faces because they are used to them, and dislike
ours because they are strange. In their aversion to our faces they are
actuated by the same motive that makes a European child cry out and
run away in terror at sight of a negro--not because he is ugly, for he
may be good-looking, but because he is strange.
Far from admiring such beauty as nature may have given them, the lower
races exercise an almost diabolical ingenuity in obliterating or
mutilating it. Hundreds of their visitors have written of certain
tribes that they would not be bad looking if they would only leave
nature alone.
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