Part 62 (1/2)

Burton attests (_C.S._, 125, 130, 60) that ”the squaw is a mere slave, living a life of utter drudgery.” The husbands ”care little for their wives.” ”The drudgery of the tent and field renders the squaw cold and unimpa.s.sioned.” ”The son is taught to make his mother toil for him.”

”One can hardly expect a smiling countenance from the human biped trudging ten or twenty miles under a load fit for a mule.” ”Dacotah females,” writes Neill (82, 85),

”deserve the sympathy of every tender heart. From early childhood they lead worse than a dog's life.

Uncultivated and treated like brutes, they are p.r.o.ne to suicide, and, when desperate, they act more like infuriated beasts than creatures of reason.”

Of the Crow branch of the Dakotas, Catlin wrote:[215] ”They are, _like all other Indian women, the slaves of their husbands_ ... and not allowed to join in their religious rites and ceremonies, nor in the dance or other amus.e.m.e.nts.” All of which is delightfully consistent with this writer's a.s.sertion that the Indians are ”not in the least behind us in conjugal affection.”[216]

In his _Travels Through the Northwest Regions of the United States_ Schoolcraft thus sums up (231) his observations:

”Of the state of female society among the Northern Indians I shall say little, because on a review of it I find very little to admire, either in their collective morality, or personal endowments.... Doomed to drudgery and hards.h.i.+ps from infancy ... without either mental resources or personal beauty--what can be said in favor of the Indian women?”

A French author, Eugene A. Vail, writes an interesting summary (207-14) of the realistic descriptions given by older writers of the brutal treatment to which the women of the Northern Indians were subjected. He refers, among other things, to the efforts made by Governor Ca.s.s, of Michigan, to induce the Indians to treat their women more humanely; but all persuasion was in vain, and the governor finally had to resort to punishment. He also refers to the selfish ingenuity with which the men succeeded in persuading the foolish squaws that it would be a disgrace for their lords and masters to do any work, and that polygamy was a desirable thing. The men took as many wives as they pleased, and if one of them remonstrated against a new rival, she received a sound thras.h.i.+ng.

In Franklin's _Journey to the Sh.o.r.es of the Polar Sea_ we are informed (160) that the women are obliged to drag the heavily laden sledges:

”Nothing can more shock the feelings of a person accustomed to civilized life than to witness the state of their degradation. When a party is on a march the women have to drag the tent, the meat, and whatever the hunter possesses, whilst he only carries his gun and medicine case.”

When the men have killed any large beast, says Hearne (90), the women are always sent to carry it to the tent. They have to prepare and cook it,

”and when it is done the wives and daughters of the greatest captains in the country are never served till all the males, even those who are in the capacity of servants, have eaten what they think proper.”

Of the Chippewas, Keating says (II., 153), that ”frequently ... their brutal conduct to their wives produces abortions.”

A friend of the Blackfoot Indians, G.B. Grinnell, relates (184, 216) that, while boys play and do as they please, a girl's duties begin at an early age, and she soon does all a woman's ”and so menial” work.

Their fathers select husbands for them and, if they disobey, have a right to beat or even kill them. ”As a consequence of this severity, suicide was quite common among the Blackfoot girls.”

A pa.s.sage in William Wood's _New England Prospect_, published in 1634,[217] throws light on the aboriginal condition of Indian women in that region. Wood refers to ”the customarie churlishnesse and salvage inhumanitie” of the men. The Indian women, he says, are

”more loving, pittiful and modest, milde, provident, and laborious than their lazie husbands.... Since the _English_ arrivall comparison hath made them miserable, for seeing the kind usage of the _English_ to their wives, they doe as much condemne their husbands for unkindnesse and commend the _English_ for love, as their husbands, commending themselves for their wit in keeping their wives industrious, doe condemn the _English_ for their folly in spoiling good working creatures.”

Concerning the intelligent, widely scattered, and numerous Iroquois, Morgan, who knew them more intimately than anyone else, wrote (322), that ”the Indian regarded woman as the inferior, the dependent, and the servant of man, and, from nature and habit, she actually considered herself to be so.” ”Adultery was punished by whipping; but the punishment was inflicted on the woman alone, who was supposed to be the only offender” (331). ”Female life among the Hurons had no bright side,” wrote Parkman (_J.C._, x.x.xIII.). After marriage,

”the Huron woman from a wanton became a drudge ... in the words of Champlain, 'their women were their mules.'

The natural result followed. In every Huron town were shrivelled hags, hideous and despised, who, in vindictiveness, ferocity, and cruelty, far exceeded the men.”

The _Jesuit Relations_ contain many references to the merciless treatment of their women by the Canadian Indians. ”These poor women are real pack-mules, enduring all hards.h.i.+ps.” ”In the winter, when they break camp, the women drag the heaviest loads over the snow; in short, the men seem to have as their share only hunting, war, and trading” (IV., 205). ”The women here are mistresses and servants”

(Hurons, XV.). In volume III. of the _Jesuit Relations_ (101), Biard writes under date of 1616:

”These poor creatures endure all the misfortunes and hards.h.i.+ps of life; they prepare and erect the houses, or cabins, furnis.h.i.+ng them with fire, wood, and water; prepare the food, preserve the meat and other provisions, that is, dry them in the smoke to preserve them; go to bring the game from the place where it has been killed; sew and repair the canoes, mend and st.i.tch the skins, curry them and make clothes and shoes of them for the whole family; they go fis.h.i.+ng and do the rowing; in short, undertake all the work except that alone of the grand chase, besides having the care and so weakening nourishment of the children....

”Now these women, although they have so much trouble, as I have said, yet are not cherished any more for it.

The husbands beat them unmercifully, and often for a very slight cause. One day a certain Frenchman undertook to rebuke a savage for this; the savage answered, angrily: 'How now, have you nothing to do but to see into my house, every time I strike my dog?'”

Surely Dr. Brinton erred grievously when he wrote, in his otherwise admirable book, _The American Race_ (49), that the fatigues of the Indian women were scarce greater than those of their husbands, nor their life more onerous than that of the peasant women of Europe to-day. Peasants in Europe work quite as hard as their wives, whereas the Indian--except during the delightful hunting period, or in war-time, which, though frequent, was after all merely episodic--did nothing at all, and considered labor a disgrace to a man, fit only for women. The difference between the European peasant and the American red man can be inferred by anyone from what observers reported of the Creek Indians of our Southern States (Schoolcraft, V., 272-77):

”The summer season, with the men, is devoted to war, or their domestic amus.e.m.e.nts of riding, horse-hunting, ball-plays, and dancing, and by the women to their customary hard labor.”

”The women perform all the labor, both in the house and field, and are, in fact, but slaves to the men, without any will of their own, except in the management of the children.”