Buffalo
Arrival at Buffalo. Walk in the town. A multitude of savages in the streets (day of a payment), new ideas that they suggest. Their ugliness, their strange air, their bronzed and oily hide, their long hair black and stiff, their European clothes that they wear like savages. . . . Population brutalized by our wines and our liquors. More horrible than the equally brutalized peoples of Europe. Something of the wild beast besides. Contrast with the moral and civilized population all about.
19. Second walk in Buffalo; pretty shops, French goods. The refinement of
European luxuries. Second glimpse of the Indians. Less disagreeable
impression than the evening before. Several of them resembling our peasants
in feature (with savage colour, however) the skin of Sicilians. Not one Indian
woman passable."
Tocqueville, note-book (Pierson, 224-225)
Itinerary