Not a single feature, from the feet to the eyeballs, has
escaped the uglifying process. "Nothing is too absurd or hideous to
please them," writes Cameron. The Eskimos afford a striking
illustration of the fact that a germ of taste for ornamentation in
general is an earlier manifestation of the esthetic faculty than the
appreciation of personal beauty; for while displaying considerable
skill and ingenuity in the decorations of their clothes, canoes, and
weapons, they mutilate their persons in various ways and allow them to
be foul and malodorous with the filth of years. One of the most
disgusting mutilations on record is that practised by the Indians of
British Columbia, who insert a piece of bone in the lower lip, which,
gradually enlarged, makes it at last project three inches. Bancroft
(I., 98) devotes three pages to the lip mutilation indulged in by the
Thlinkeet females. When the operation is completed and the block is
withdrawn "the lip drops down upon the chin like a piece of leather,
displaying the teeth, and presenting altogether a ghastly spectacle."
The lower teeth and gum, says one witness, are left quite naked;
another says that the plug "distorts every feature in the lower part
of the face"; a third that an old woman, the wife of a chief, had a
lip "ornament" so large "that by a peculiar motion of her under-lip
she could almost conceal her whole face with it"; and a fourth gives a
description of this "abominably revolting spectacle," which is too
nauseating to quote.
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