Some time ago, a young Chippewa girl conceived a violent passion for a
hunter of a different tribe, and followed him from his winter
hunting-ground to his own village. He was already married, and the wife,
not being inclined to admit the rival, drove this love-sick damsel away,
and treated her with the utmost indignity. The girl, in desperation,
offered herself as a slave to the wife, to carry wood and water, and lie
at her feet--anything to be admitted within the same lodge and only
look upon the object of her affection. She prevailed at length. Now, the
mere circumstance of her residing within the same lodge made her also
the wife of the man, according to the Indian custom; but apparently she
was content to forego all the privileges and honours of a wife. She
endured, for several months, with uncomplaining resignation, every
species of ill usage and cruelty on the part of the first wife, till at
length this woman, unable any longer to suffer even the presence of a
rival, watched an opportunity as the other entered the wigwam with a
load of fire-wood, and cleft her skull with the husband's tomahawk.
"And did the man permit all this?" was the natural question.
The answer was remarkable. "What could _he_ do? he could not help it: a
woman is always absolute mistress in her own wigwam!"
In the end, the murder was not punished. The poor victim having fled
from a distant tribe, there were no relatives to take vengeance, or do
justice, and it concerned no one else. She lies buried at a short
distance from the Sault-Ste-Marie, where the murderess and her husband
yet live.
Women sometimes perish of grief for the loss of a husband or a child,
and men have been known to starve themselves on the grave of a beloved
wife. Men have also been known to give up their wives to the traders for
goods and whisky; but this, though forbidden by no law, is considered
disreputable, or, as my informant expressed it, "only bad Indians do
so."
I should doubt, from all I see and hear, that the Indian squaw is that
absolute slave, drudge, and nonentity in the community, which she has
been described. She is despotic in her lodge, and every thing it
contains is hers; even of the game her husband kills, she has the
uncontrolled disposal. If her husband does not please her, she scolds
and even cuffs him; and it is in the highest degree unmanly to answer or
strike her. I have seen here a woman scolding and quarrelling with her
husband, seize him by the hair, in a style that might have become
civilised Billingsgate, or christian St. Giles's, and the next day I
have beheld the same couple sit lovingly together on the sunny side of
the wigwam, she kneeling behind him, and combing and arranging the hair
she had been pulling from his head the day before; just such a group as
I remember to have seen about Naples, or the Campagna di Roma, with very
little obvious difference either in costume or complexion.
There is no law against marrying near relations, but it is always
avoided; it is contrary to their customs: even first cousins do not
marry. The tie of blood seems considered as stronger than that of
marriage. A woman considers that she belongs more to her own relatives
than to her husband or his relatives; yet, notwithstanding this and the
facility of divorce, separations between husband and wife are very rare.
A couple will go on "squabbling and making it up" all their lives,
without having recourse to this expedient. If from displeasure, satiety,
or any other cause, a man sends his wife away, she goes back to her
relations, and invariably takes her children with her. The indefeasible
right of the mother to her offspring is Indian law, or rather, the
contrary notion does not seem to have entered their minds. A widow
remains subject to her husband's relations for two years after his
death; this is the decent period of mourning. At the end of two years,
she returns some of the presents made to her by her late husband, goes
back to her own relatives, and may marry again.
These particulars, and others which may follow, apply to the Chippewas
and the Ottawas around me; other tribes have other customs. I speak
merely of those things which are brought under my own immediate
observation and attention.