CHAPTER I

Produced by Rénald Lévesque

WOMAN

VOLUME X

WOMEN OF AMERICA

BY

JOHN ROUSE LARUS

[Illustration 1: HUEMAC II. MEETS XOCHITL.

After the painting by L. Obregon.

Huemac II. began to reign in Mexico about 995, in what is called the

Toltec period. Xochitl, accompanied by her father, a nobleman, went to

the court of Huemac, carrying with her as an offering to the king a

beverage which she had invented. The king tasted the wine, and desired

to have more. Later, Xochitl returned to the court, and Huemac, who

already was fascinated with the girl, caused her to be retained, and

sent a message to her father that he had placed her in the care of his

court ladies and would complete her education. Shortly afterward his

queen died, and Huemac immediately made Xochitl his queen.]

Woman

In all ages and in all countries

VOLUME X

WOMEN OF AMERICA

BY

JOHN ROUSE LARUS

ILLUSTRATED

PHILADELPHIA

GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PUBLISHERS

INTRODUCTION

The present volume completes the story of woman as told in the series of

which it forms part. The history of nations is, in its ultimate

analysis, largely that of woman. Therefore this series in its wide

inclusiveness forms a more than ordinarily interesting history. The

present study of the women of America is innocent of theorizing or

philosophy and from the nature of the subject the narrative takes the

reader into paths generally unfamiliar in historic studies.

Of the North American aboriginal woman the knowledge possessed admits of

but broad generalities as to her status and condition. The author of

this volume has, however, happily extracted from the available sources

what is informing as to the position of the woman so that a better

conception of her will be the part of his readers. It will be seen that

she has not always been the neglected and unconsidered creature that the

popular mind has accepted. Instead, she has held among many tribes a

higher place of power than man, and that by custom and in fact she was

held in high consideration. The condition of the aboriginal woman before

the advent of the white race was not that to which she fell as the

consequence of that advent. In the present work notable instances in

support of this view will be found. In considering the moral status and

the customs of the aborigines it should be borne in mind that morality

is standardized by nations or peoples for themselves, and the morality

of individuals must be measured by its relation to convention to this

respect. In this connection the author concludes that the morality of

the Indian woman is of at least average excellence. That contact with

the white man arrested--or as the author maintains "degraded"--the

progress of civilization, slow as that progress may have been among the

aborigines, cannot be doubted, nor that there was "a reversion to a more

barbarous type than had before been prevalent."

As we consider the principles of government among the North American

tribes we find that the matriarchal system prevailed. The Salic Law,

whether in its general or its restricted meaning, was little favored

among them. If in the history of these people a Queen Esther stands

forth as a cruel monster, did not proud Rome produce a Messalina? Or

need we go beyond the records of a later date of the people of one of

the most cultured nations of Europe? And yet Esther was among the foes,

the despoilers of her people, while Messalina found her victims among

her own people. It may not be amiss to recall the incident of Frances

Slocum as an evidence that the life of woman among the Indians was not

necessarily distasteful. Altogether, the author of this volume writes

sympathetically of the vanishing Amerinds,--which in no way lessens the

value of his study,--and furnishes many little known or hardly

remembered anecdotes of their women, while his succinct descriptions of

their polity and of the lot and place of woman among them is both highly

entertaining and instructive.

The women of Mexico and South America furnish scanty material for the

study of woman. Nevertheless, from the records of the Aztec civilization

the author has abstracted the salient features of the life of their

women. It will be seen that the Aztec woman enjoyed a higher status than

was attained by the woman of any other native American race. Her legal

rights were carefully protected; the marriage tie was severely

safeguarded; the education of girls was committed to the care of

priestesses; and in social functions woman was the equal of man.

Domestic life presented a very pleasing aspect and even slaves--slavery

was generally confined to those taken in war--enjoyed greater privileges

than among any other people. The period of the conquest furnishes a

Marina to exemplify the fidelity and devotion of which the native woman

was capable. That of the Spanish occupation offers little of interest

concerning the womanhood of Mexico, and not until the republic had

acquired a distinct nationality, in fact as well as in name, do we find

a Mexican type. This period the author regards as the best, but soon the

adoption of European and North American fashions and customs destroyed

the characteristic Mexican type. This resultant he claims is further

deteriorated by the later "veneer" or hybrid culture borrowed from the

same sources. The leading characteristics of the native civilization of

South America are traced and the salient features of the life and status

of its women are presented. Among the Incas equality with men and a

condition for woman as favorable as among the Aztecs is shown to have

prevailed.

An interesting account is given of the culture of the Araucanians, the

desperate warriors who resisted the Spanish invaders long after the rest

of the tribes of Chile had submitted to the conquerors. The status of

the women of this tribe, and of the peculiar marriage customs is

especially interesting; so is the account of the women of the Gauchos

whose preeminent claim to notice in a history of woman is that they are

"the most unmoral women on the face of the earth." There is also a brief

but none the less informing account of the women of the greatest of

South American countries, Brazil, which better than any other southern

republic exhibits the advance made in the position and influence of

woman in national progress and well-being.

The record of individual women in this section is scanty; but the

general outline of the growth of feminine influence in recent times is

noted. Woman in politics, in revolutionary movements, and, still more

notably, woman in the social and educational progress that is now making

the best history of South America the author discriminatingly presents

to the reader, with individual mention of foremost leaders of thought.

Of the American woman proper, the author follows the steps from

settlement days when the principles were to be tested which moved the

Pilgrims to self-exile. Her influence and her initiative, illustrated by

characteristic story and narrative of environment, are presented with

precision and clearness so that the reader can grasp the subtle power

exercised by woman during the formative period. Similarly are the women

of the great colony to the South considered, and the points of

divergence and their causes and results noted as compared with the

northern colony.

The typical American woman is remarkable among women not merely as a

type, but also because she is the evolution of only a few generations.

She is without a traditional culture, but, as the author asserts, she

inherited the cultures of all the nations. Beginning with the basic

culture of the mother country she has grafted thereon the native

branches which have sprung from her environment and has absorbed such

mental and temperamental characteristics of introduced nationalities as

have best suited her conditions, and from all together she has created

the American type of womanhood, whose particular characteristic is to

_do_.

In the women of these two mother settlements are found the "foundations

and matrices of American femininity." So the causes and growth of the

American type of womanhood are shown in its evolutionary processes

therein along lines mainly parallel until the need of resistance to the

mother country brings about a near approach to a national type. The

spread of woman's influence to the constantly extending frontier and the

new settlements is broadly but clearly sketched and the potency of the

foreign settlers considered.

A very interesting part of the volume traces the development of society

at the capital, the growth of an aristocracy, the unification of type

that followed the establishment of the republic and marked the early

growth of the nation. Still more interesting is the history of the

dissolution of the courtly influence at Washington when the great strife

reft the national womanhood and twin hatred ruled where unity was so

lately waxing in strength. The author's presentation of this period is

lucid and convincing, while fearlessly just to the woman of both

sections. His emphasis of the causal misunderstanding as regards the

women cannot fail to be appreciated, though it places upon our womanhood

a heavy responsibility for the sorrows which befell the nation and

struck down the South exhausted and almost destroyed.

A chapter on the Women of Canada affords chief interest for the account

of the _habitantes_, the only distinct Canadian type of womanhood,

though the author recognizes the advanced position occupied by the woman

of British North America.

Of the recent developments of the American woman's activities, the

sphere of which is ever enlarging, the author admirably projects on his

page all the salient movements. Many phases of activity are of course

tentative and their permanency and value are yet undetermined, while

others mark the appreciation of the obligations associated with wealth

or the need of diversion attending the enjoyment of leisure; all,

however, are characteristic of the unresting energy of the American

woman. If this characteristic is responsible for some illogical and

occasionally harmful manifestations, the fact remains that the sum of

the results is vastly preponderant for the good of the nation and the

advancement, morally, intellectually, and physically of humanity.

The author is to be congratulated for his boldness in undertaking to set

forth the broad picture of woman's part in the movements of the last

quarter of a century. The task is perplexing, almost terrifying to mere

man; conditions are in a state of flux or, more properly speaking,

bubbling activity, but a wise discrimination has been shown in the

present case. Much of the American woman's history that is unfamiliar

will be found in this volume, which is sympathetic throughout, and

expresses admiration for the noble and the good in all the stages of

that subtle evolution which we now recognize as the American woman.

JOHN A. BURGAN.

_Hammonton, New Jersey_.

CHAPTER I

THE ABORIGINAL WOMAN

THE attempt to crystallize within the space of a single chapter even the

most salient facts concerning the aboriginal woman of America is one

foredoomed to failure. It is true that even in the present advanced

state of ethnology there is comparatively little knowledge of the

conditions which have obtained, and even of those which do obtain, among

the red people of our continent; we can indeed see and record the outer

results, but the inner causes are still in great measure hidden from us.

The American Indian is a peculiar people in the strictest sense of the

words; and is not to be judged by the standards that we apply to those

races with whose history we are more familiar, nor is he to be measured

by their heights or depths. In many ways he is, and always has been, a

law unto himself; and although this state of things is passing away

beneath the influence of a steadily advancing civilization, it has been

conquered rather than modified, and the Indian remains beneath the

surface the same enigma, the same unique individuality, that he has ever

been.

Moreover, there is a peculiar difficulty in dealing with this division

of our subject. One is forced to speak almost entirely in generalities,

this compulsion existing both because of spatial limitations and because

of the dearth of exact knowledge that still exists concerning the

conditions of the Amerind in the far past. Yet enough is known to assure

us that only the broadest generalities are inclusively true. The custom

which was a rule of life among the Hurons of the North may have been

entirely unknown among the Seminoles of the South; the cult which was of

deep foundation among the Delawares of the Lakes may never have come to

the knowledge of the Navajos of the great plains or the Tehamas who

dwelt on the shores of the Pacific. For it is a fact which has never

received sufficient recognition that the Amerind--to adopt a convenient,

though not entirely defensible, nomenclature--had as many national

divisions as have the inhabitants of Europe or Asia. We speak of the

"tribes" of American Indians, and in so doing we are entirely correct;

yet we thus blind ourselves to the significance of the divisions which

have always existed, because we are accustomed to give to the word

"tribe" a limited meaning which is not strictly its possession. The

settlers of our country came far nearer to truth of expression when they

spoke of "the Five Nations"; for nations many of these tribes really

were, and nations radically differing in all but physical

characteristics, and not infrequently, where there existed great

divergence of climatic conditions, in physical characteristics also. It

is true that the bounds of nationality were not so sharply drawn as they

were, for example, between the Gaul and the Teuton, the Slav and the

Briton; but they existed, and were discernible in many important

matters. Thus the wide divergence of custom and conditions which

frequently appears in our study of the Amerind was not mere accident,

but was the product of a variant civilization--if we may apply such term

to the barbaric conditions which for the most part existed when the race

was introduced to the knowledge of Europeans. For this reason,

generalization regarding the race is dangerous and usually leads to

inaccuracy. Because, for example, a Modoc might kill his mother-in-law

without incurring any penalty for the deed, we must not assume that such

a custom was prevalent among all the tribes of the American Indians.

Because among the Tehamas the newborn child was thrown into a stream by

its mother immediately after its birth, when if it rose to the surface

and cried it was rescued, while if it sank to rise no more its body was

left to be carried away by the current, we must not therefore conclude

that such a proceeding was common among the rest of the tribes of the

Pacific slope. Each nation, and frequently each tribe, in the more

limited sense of the word, had its own customs, its own superstitions,

its own creed, its own conditions of existence. Yet there were certain

manifestations of these circumstances which could be found among all the

nations of the primeval American continent, and it is these things, as

they relate to the women of the Amerinds, that it is the purpose of this

chapter to discuss, as well as to cast a rapid glance over the general

history and progress of the aboriginal woman of the continent of North

America.

In order that the reader shall understand the normal position of woman

among the Amerinds in their undisturbed civilization, it is necessary to

refer to the usual constitution and conditions of the American tribes in

general. In the light of modern research, there can be little

doubt--though the fact was for long neglected--that the original

American society, as met with by the first explorers of the country, was

founded upon the gens, the totem or clan, as the social unit rather than

upon the family, as was long supposed. Mr. Powell defines the American

gens as "an organized body of consanguineal kindred"; and while this

constituence was often modified by the introduction, by adoption, of

strangers into the gens, in such cases the tribal conscience was

satisfied with the fiction that such adoption left undisturbed the

relation of the gens as consanguineous. An indeterminate number of these

gentes, whose members dwelt together and were under common obligation to

assist one another, composed the tribe. There were also "phratries," or

religious brotherhoods, composed of smaller groups of the gentes; but

these need not here be considered. The gens was autonomic, at least to

all practical ends; it selected its own chieftain and decided all

matters relating to questions of property or blood-vengeance when these

concerned its own members. Each gens was represented in the council of

the tribe, which council selected the tribal chief. Members of one gens

could not intermarry; and, most important of all to our present purpose,

it was by the female line that descent was traced and that property

descended. Such is a brief sketch of the American tribal organization.

This, however, was the organization in theory only; when it came to the

matter of practice, it is very rarely, indeed, that we find the theory

preserved immutable. On the contrary, there were so many exceptions that

we must regard the rule only as one to be kept in sight for the purposes

of generalization. For example, the law of descent in the female line

was very often abrogated, even where the gentile system was in force;

and consanguineous marriages, and even incest,--rare though this is

among primitive peoples, probably because, as Darwin points out,

familiarity is not inducive of affection,--were not unknown. However,

there is enough stability in the theory to warrant the deduction of

certain general statements dependent upon it.

We are now prepared to take a view of the status of woman among the

tribes of primitive America. It is the general belief that she was a

mere chattel, having no rights whatever, existing merely upon the

sufferance of her husband, and in all ways a slave, a creature without

rights or privileges. Such a picture is far from the truth, even though

it contain many aspects of partial truth. As a matter of fact, the

matriarchal system prevailed in the majority of the American tribes; and

this alone is sufficient to show that woman had some rights. These were

not precisely personal, but rather gentile; yet they acted in many ways

as personal. For example, where the matriarchal system was in force, all

property rights, as between husband and wife, vested in the latter; she

alone could dispose of property,--and that at her discretion--, and it

was to her relatives and not to his that the property passed on the

death of the pair. Moreover, in the tribes wherein prevailed the theory

of maternal descent, the children did not look upon the father as a

relative; he was not of their gens, and they owed him no duties

whatever. So far was this theory carried in many cases that the children

would not provide for their fathers when these became disabled by

sickness, accident, or age, but sent their unfortunate sires for

assistance to the gentes from which they came. Again, the life of a

woman was in many cases rated as of higher value than that of a man. We

have Father Ragueneau's authority for the statement that among the

Hurons thirty gifts was considered sufficient compensation for the death

of a man, but the blood-money exacted for the killing of a woman was

forty gifts. Such a condition of affairs as that mentioned by the old

Jesuit is strong argument for the theory that woman was held by the

primitive Americans in higher esteem than has been generally thought,

while her control of the property must have won for her--judging from

modern civilized instances--at least some consideration from her

husband.

Undoubtedly there was an obverse side to the picture. Marriage by

purchase was a feature of American primitive existence; and, though this

also has its modern counterpart, the methods pursued among the Amerinds

were not so pleasing to the vanity of the bride as are those of our own

day and civilization. The woman herself rarely had anything to say in

the matter; sometimes the selection of a wife for a warrior was

undertaken by the whole gens, or at least a committee thereof. Among the

Hurons, for instance, this selection was made by the old women, and we

are told by J. W. Sanborn that these old ladies, in their search for

fitting brides for the young men of the tribe, "united them with painful

uniformity to women several years their senior." This may have been

wiser in tribal polity than agreeable to the warriors; as for the

prospective brides, their preferences were not taken into account at

all. In view of these facts, it is no wonder that every lake in our

country can boast its "Lovers' Leap," where the young Indian pair,

fleeing from their cruel parents, cast themselves headlong down--to be

afterward "enshrined in song and story."

"Song and story" have indeed lent their potent aid to confuse and blur

our view of the primitive American woman. Longfellow's story of

_Hiawatha_ is famous for many reasons, but the chief among them is not

its fidelity to truth of conditions. Yet so truly has the name of

Minnehaha, "The Laughing Water," become even as a household word to many

of our readers of poetry that this sketch would seem incomplete were no

reference made to it here. All know the poetic story: how the demi-god

Hiawatha, miraculous of birth, tutelary genius of the Indians of North

America, wise, benign, powerful, teacher of all good, protector against

all ills, marries the lovely Minnehaha, the daughter of the old Dakota

arrow-maker. Here would seem to be a union blessed of the gods; yet it

is foredoomed to bring but sorrow. Not even the power of Hiawatha can

save his beloved Minnehaha from the impending and foretold fate which is

to be hers. At last "Famine" and "Fever," two unbidden and unwelcome

guests, force entrance into her wigwam; she cannot withstand the baleful

glare of Death, and, uttering the cry of "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" she

passes alone into "the Kingdom of Ponemah, the land of the Hereafter."

It is all very beautiful in its fancy and imagination, but nowhere in

the poem do we find the American primitive woman as we have learned to

see her through the calmer eyes of those who have sought her story in

lower strata than those of poesy.

Polygamy generally prevailed among the Amerinds, and modern civilization

is accustomed to regard this as an evil from the standpoint of the

woman. It may, however, be questioned whether in this instance, as in so

many others, our pity has not been misplaced. The work of the fields was

universally performed by women, their lords and masters confining their

contribution to the household work to furnishing the table with fish and

game. Had monogamy prevailed, the lot of the wife would necessarily have

been hard; the work which she would have found to her hand would have

been more than she could accomplish, and she must have sunk under it.

But the custom of polygamy obviated such necessity, for it brought into

the household other servants who should perform the requisite tasks. It

is at least probable, though it is not an established fact, that each

household had a chief wife, to whom the rest were subservient; in fact,

there is reason to believe that the constitution of the Indian household

was not unlike that of the Israelites, wherein the added "wives" were

little else than concubines, having a legal status but not full rights

of wifeship. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that polygamy,

apart from its moral aspect, was an institution for which the Indian

wife had cause to be profoundly grateful. It ameliorated her lot in such

wise that she was really subject to no more hardships than is the

European peasant woman of the present day.

On the other hand, it would seem that at least in some instances the

husband had absolute rights of life and death over his wife. In the not

very edifying--and probably even less authentic--autobiography of James

Beckwourth, the white man who was long chief of the Crow tribe, there is

related an incident where, his Blackfoot wife having shown disregard to

his commands, he coolly took up his war club and struck her on the head,

stunning her, and, as was thought at the time, killing her. The blow

turned out not to be fatal; but this does not obscure the point of the

incident, which lies in the fact that the father of the woman, who was

present, told Beckwourth that he had done perfectly right and acted

entirely as befitted a great warrior. Beckwourth rather plumed himself

upon his conduct,--though it is difficult to see wherein the incident

called for the display of any very heroic qualities,--and in his

narration almost apologizes for the fact that he did not strike quite so

hard a blow as he had intended; but, while the story has its amusing

features, our concern in the matter lies in the fact that such conduct

seems to have been entirely conventional. This incident occurred in the

beginning of the last century; but it is evident that it must have been

a survival of custom, and not a novelty introduced by a fresh

civilization.

Yet we hear at times of women taking part in the most important councils

of their nations, of their even leading warriors to battle, of their

exercise of all the functions of a ruler. Women have been made head

chiefs; a very notable instance of a woman ruler was the "Queen of

Pamunkey," who was the widow of Totapotamoi, a great Indian chief in the

Virginias. She came to one of the councils of the Virginia Burgesses in

the time of Berkeley, and was the recipient of much attention. She was

described as a woman of majestic presence, who entered the council

chamber "with a comportment graceful to admiration, grave court-like

gestures, and a majestic air on her face"; and through the quaint old

verbiage we can descry a woman of carriage and powers of intellect

remarkable in her race. Her dress was picturesque; she wore a sort of

crown of black and white wampum plaited together, and her fine figure

was covered by a robe of buckskin, dressed with the hair outward and

decorated with fringes--not impossibly scalplocks--from the shoulders to

the hem. She had been summoned to the council to give a promise of help;

but she had her own grievances to relate in the fact that her husband

had been slain while fighting for the English, and yet she had never

received any compensation or acknowledgment of his services. The

incident holds for us its chief interest as a proof of the high standing

of individual women among the tribes of the Atlantic slope. This female

rule was not a passing custom; it was evidently of long establishment at

the time of the coming of the colonists, and it continued into later

colonial and even into Revolutionary times. Of the later instances of

women chiefs, Queen Esther furnishes a noted example. This abominable

woman, who played such a prominent part in the massacre of Wyoming in

1778, was a half-breed, probably the daughter of Catherine Montour, also

a half-breed and a fiend incarnate. In the attack upon Wyoming Valley,

led by Major John Butler, son of that Walter Butler whose name was so

execrated by the colonists,--the Senecas took part, led by a noted chief

named Gi-on-gwah-tuh and by Queen Esther, who was probably, though this

is not certain, in supreme command of the Indians. However this may be,

we know that she led the attack, fighting like a fiend, and that after

the action sixteen prisoners were placed in a circle around a large

stone, known to this day as Queen Esther's Rock. Striking up a chant,

she passed around the circle, at each step dashing out the brains of a

victim. Two of the prisoners, however, managed to make a dash for

liberty and succeeded in effecting their escape, and it is to them that

we owe our account of the massacre.

As is so often the case in matters of colonial record, there is a

confusion between Queen Esther and her mother, and most writers allege

that the "queen" was herself the Catherine Montour whom others claim to

have been the mother of the chieftainess. The latter theory is probably

correct. When in 1744 Catherine Montour, who, in her youth, had been

captured and adopted by the Senecas, appeared at a council of the Indian

commissioners and delegates from the Six Nations, the council being held

at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we are told by Stone, in his life of Sir

William Johnson, that "Although so young when made a prisoner, she had

nevertheless preserved her language; and being in youth and middle age

very handsome and of good address, she had been greatly caressed by the

gentlewomen of Philadelphia during her occasional visits to that city

with her people on business. Indeed, she was always held in great esteem

by the white people, invited to their houses, and entertained with

marked civility."

It would seem, then, that in 1744 Catherine Montour had already passed

middle age, and indeed we know from the account of Lord Cornbury that

she was born some time before the close of the seventeenth century. It

would therefore seem most probable that Queen Esther was the daughter of

the Catherine Montour who was a Huron by birth and a Seneca by adoption;

but this matters little in the search for the deductions to be made from

the story of Queen Esther and the unfortunate Wyoming Valley. Accepting

as accurate only that part of her history which deals with the massacre,

we know that Esther was a war chief of the Senecas and that she had

absolute control over them. We also find that the Catherine Montour of

Stone's account, whether or not she was identical with Queen Esther, was

of such influence with her tribe that she was selected by them as a

delegate to an important convention. This, then, furnishes us with a

specific instance of the power of women among the Indians.

An incident in this same massacre of Wyoming is illustrative of a

somewhat curious fact with regard to Indian life, the adaptability of

their captives to the life of the woods. There was captured by the

Indians a little girl named Frances Slocum, about five years old. For

long all trace of her was lost; but in 1835, more than fifty years after

the massacre, an old woman known as Maconaqua, living in a Miami village

in Indiana, was by accident identified as the lost Frances Slocum. To

all appearance she was an Indian; and she was really so in costume,

habits, and even in manner of thought. When the events of her childhood

were recalled to her memory, she herself was able to give evidence which

rendered her identification unquestionably complete. But when pressed to

return to civilization and her relatives, she absolutely declined. "I

cannot go," she said; "I have always lived with the Indians; I am used

to them; I wish to live and die with them. My husband and my boys are

buried here, and I cannot leave them. I have a house and land, two

daughters, a son-in-law, and grandchildren. I was a sapling when they

took me. It is all gone past. I should not be happy with my white

relatives. I am glad to see them; but I cannot go."

So she was left with her red brothers by adoption; but when, some ten

years later, the Miami Indians were moved West; a bill was introduced

into Congress by a Mr. Bidlack, securing to Maconaqua and her heirs a

tract of land a mile square, embracing the home in which she had so long

lived. But she pined after her red kindred, and in 1847 died from sheer

weariness of the new conditions of her existence, and was buried near

the confluence of the Wabash and the Missisinewa Rivers.

This incident is here related not merely for the sake of the pathos

which it holds, but for the purpose of noting a curious contrast between

the sons of the wilderness and the children of civilization. The case of

Frances Slocum is typical; many a captive has been led away by the red

men, and has afterward become so completely Indianized that he or she

would stubbornly refuse to return to the life of the white race, and, if

forced to do so, would pine and die for lack of the breath of the

forests and plains. Yet never has there been known an instance where a

red man became reconciled to life among the whites; always, when not

forcibly detained captive, they fled back to the free life which had

been theirs, even if they had known it but as children; if kept in

captivity, they broke their chains by death. So that when we vaunt our

civilization we must remember that it has no charms for those who have

known the life of the woods, and thus we learn some at least of the

reasons why we have failed to produce from the Indian a finished product

of the civilization of our day.

Uncongenial as it may be to our pride of race to admit the fact, it

would seem certain that the Indian character has power of persistence

over that of the Caucasian. Many were the white captives whose blood

flowed in the veins of succeeding generations of red men, but that blood

was never powerful even to modify the traits which were the inheritance

of the Indian. It is most likely that the first white child ever born on

our shores--that Virginia Dare whose story has been so often told that

it is needless here to recapitulate it--was carried captive to the tents

of the Indians and in time became the wife of some brave, and that her

blood is in the veins of some of the survivors of the red men; but it

had no power to make itself known in any persistence of trait. It is

certain that a half-breed, whatever the circumstances of his education,

almost invariably shows the dominance of the Indian nature over the

white. This fact, which has not received adequate attention by students

of ethnology, is worthy of consideration in its significance; but this

is not the place for such consideration.

After this somewhat lengthy digression, let us now return to our more

immediate subject, the status of woman among the aborigines during their

period of freedom from white influence. Enough has been said to show

that such status was widely different from that usually attributed to

the women of the Amerinds. It is most true that women were hewers of

wood and drawers of water--that they performed most or all of the labor

which civilization is accustomed to look upon as menial and much that it

considers the rightful duty of man; but in this respect the American

Indian did not differ from most or all primitive peoples. It is only

civilization that has released woman from the tasks which she was

accustomed to perform during the days when the chief sources of

sustenance were found in the spoils of the chase, the duty of providing

such sustenance naturally falling to the men of the community or

household. This division of labor if so it can be called has been in all

countries and among all peoples destructive to the claims of woman to

high consideration. Among primitive peoples there has never been

recognized that which is now known as chivalry toward the weaker sex; if

only because of weakness, rendering resistance to tyranny and oppression

impossible, women in such communities have always been relegated to the

position of slaves and chattels. Yet this state of affairs obtained less

strongly among the American Indians than among most races in similar

conditions of civilization. With the former, woman had many privileges

which she was usually denied among other similarly developed peoples.

Not only, as has been shown, did she have the opportunity granted her to

make herself a power in her tribe, if her intellect were of force

sufficient to enable her thus to do, but she had certain well-defined

privileges inherent in her sex--privileges which sometimes were powerful

even to overcome the strength of custom or the promptings of vengeance.

One of these peculiar privileges is illustrated in the story of

Pocahontas, and, notwithstanding the hoary antiquity of the tale, it

must be set down here in order to illustrate this and some other points

needful to be understood if we are to comprehend the true position of

the Amerind woman among her fellows.

[Illustration 2: THE DEATH OF MINNEHAHA.

After the painting by William L. Dodge.

The demi-god Hiawatha, miraculous of birth, tutelary genius of the

Indians of North America, wise, benign, powerful, teacher of all good,

protector against all ills, marries the lovely Minnehaha, the daughter

of the old Dakota arrow-maker.... Not even the power of Hiawatha can

save his beloved Minnehaha from the impending and foretold fate which is

to be hers. At last "Famine" and "Fever," two unbidden and unwelcome

guests, force entrance into her wigwam; she cannot withstand the baleful

glare of Death, and, uttering the cry of "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" she

passes alone into "the Kingdom of Ponemah, the land of the Hereafter."]

When John Smith--if we are to believe his own account, which in this one

instance seems fairly credible--had been taken prisoner by

Opechancanough and led before Powhatan for judgment, the matter at issue

was summarily settled in this wise: the prisoner was laid upon the

ground, his head rested upon a large stone, and a club was poised ready

to dash out his brains. Nevertheless, the adventurer's brains, which

served him so well afterward when he came to write an account of his

perils by land and sea,--being restrained in their flights by no

scruples as to the difference between truth and falsehood, were not to

be wasted upon the soil of Virginia; for Matoaca, or Pocahontas, as she

is more popularly known, the daughter of Powhatan, rushed forward, threw

herself upon the body of Smith to shield him from the threatening club,

and claimed him for her own under the custom which permitted Indian

women thus to rescue captives taken in fight or by wile. The young

princess--as the English inaccurately termed her--being but twelve or

thirteen years of age at the time, it is not probable that she claimed

Smith for her husband, though even this is by no means impossible, as

early betrothals were not uncommon among the Amerinds; but she could

just as easily and efficaciously adopt him as her brother, and it is

more likely that she chose this less drastic method of preserving his

life. At all events, Smith was rescued from the fate which had

threatened him; and while it is by no means impossible that the wily old

savage, Powhatan, had arranged the whole matter, adoption and all, with

a view to establishing the closest and most favorable relations with

such a conjurer as Smith was held to be,--this view is suggested to

future historians in their search for the truth concerning John

Smith,--the fact remains that Smith was saved, and one of the noblest

liars that ever graced the world was preserved to humanity. It is

interesting to note that Smith records that at Appomatox, afterward

Bermuda Hundred, he found a female _werowance_, or queen, "a fat, lusty,

manly woman," who was almost smothered in copper ornaments: a

circumstance which tends to confirm the fact of the frequency of women

rulers among the Indians.

Pocahontas was not destined to become the wife of the man whom she had

saved. Whether or not she regarded him with the eyes of more than

sisterly affection is uncertain, but it is entirely certain that Captain

John Smith never loved anything but his own valuable person. Some years

later, Pocahontas was treacherously captured by one Captain Argall--who

bought her from some Potomac Indians whom she was visiting, the price

paid being a copper kettle, a valuation which would seem to make strange

the pride of those who claim descent from the "princess"--and held as a

hostage. Soon after her capture she was married to John Rolfe, though

whether willingly or in the role of a captive does not appear. Taken by

Rolfe to England, she was visited by Smith, whose account of the single

interview which occurred is one of the most cold-blooded pieces of

writing that was ever put on paper. It is worth quoting in its display

of dignity and pathos on the part of the savage and of ingratitude and

callousness to all decent feelings on the part of the Christian--by

courtesy:

"Being about this time about to set sail for New England, I could not

stay to do her that service I desired and she well deserved; but hearing

she was at Brentford with divers of my friends, I went to see her. After

a modest salutation, without a word she turned about, obscured her face,

not seeming well contented.... But not long after, she began to talk,

and remembered me well what courtesies she had done, saying, 'You did

promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like unto you;

you called him father, being in his land a stranger, and by the same

reason so must I do you.' (Which, though I would have excused, I durst

not allow of that title, because she was a king's daughter.) With a

well-set countenance she said, 'Were you not afraid to come into my

father's country, and caused fear in him and all his people but me; and

fear you here I should call you father? I tell you then I will, and you

shall call me child, and so I will be for ever and ever your countryman.

They did tell us always you were dead, and I knew no other till I came

to Plymouth; yet Powhatan did command Uttamatomakin to seek you and to

know the truth, because your countrymen will lie much.'"

The only reason that exists for believing the report of this interview,

coming from the source it does, is the fact that it tells heavily

against the recounter, though his invariable, smug self-conceit prevents

him from seeing this aspect of the matter. The dignified reproach of

Smith's neglect, the pathetic appeal to the courtesies which had been

lavished upon him, she was too proud to allude to her rescue of his

brains from the impending club,--and the proud anger which breaks forth

in the determination that she will call him "father," as is her right,

form a fine contrast to the petty and selfish attitude of her erstwhile

friend, who would have "excused" her using the tender title of father,

but that she was "a king's daughter" and so might by use of the word

place him in a false position toward his patron, Prince Charles. Of

course, this was the merest excuse; he knew perfectly well that such a

thing was ridiculous; but he needed some excuse for his unmanly attitude

toward the woman who had saved his life and whose father had called him

friend. It is true that King James had objected to the "presumption" of

Rolfe in marrying a "lady of royal birth "; but even that absurd

attitude of the king gives no excuse for Smith, since between marriage

with a "princess" and the mere use of the formal but affectionate title

of "father" lay a broad gulf.

The contemptible captain met his savior no more; for the Lady Rebecca,

as Pocahontas was now called, after being presented at court and winning

universal admiration by her dignified bearing and lovable disposition,

died of consumption just as she was about to set sail for her native

land. She left one child, a son, by Rolfe, and through him her blood

flows in the veins of some of the Virginia families of our own day. John

Randolph of Roanoke made it his boast that he was one of the descendants

of the Indian "princess"; but then John Randolph was very eccentric

indeed in more ways than one.

If more than proportional space has been devoted to this history of

Pocahontas, it is because in the narrative, and especially in the

characteristic glimpse obtained through the excerpt from Smith's story

of the interview, are to be found several very suggestive lessons as to

the nature as well as status of the Indian woman in the time of the

early colonists, before the new civilization had exerted any formative

influence whatever upon the old. The dignity of bearing, the eloquence

of speech, the modest and yet impressive demeanor of this child of the

woods were of her nature and training, not grafted there by the

environment in which she found herself during her residence in England.

In the eyes of those who surrounded her she was but a savage; but to us

she is far more, for she is representative of a race which has been

greatly misunderstood. It was a typical Indian woman who stood in such

splendid contrast to the time-serving and ungrateful Smith, who bore

herself at court with all the native dignity of a princess of the blood

royal, who showed herself in all essentials a better Christian and

higher type of true civilization than the majority of those of Caucasian

race with whom she came into contact. Such a woman as this was not the

product of a state of unredeemed barbarism, neither could she have

learned her dignity and self-possession among a people where her sex

knew only degraded slavery. That she was the daughter of a chief was not

of itself sufficient to rescue her from the usual lot of her sex, nor

was her association with Englishmen--especially of the type of Smith,

Argall, or even Rolfe himself--likely to change radically her modes of

thought and lend to her any admirable qualities of nature or bearing

that were not of her normal environment. So it is impossible to escape

the conclusion that among the tribes of Virginia at least--and it is far

from probable that these were peculiar in this respect--woman held a

position far higher than is generally supposed. It is necessary to

reconcile this theory with the known degradation of the Indian woman in

after years, and this task is not impossible; but before so doing it is

necessary that we retrace our steps to primitive conditions, in order to

glance for a moment at the status of women among some of the Western

tribes, which were in some respects more highly civilized than their

brothers of the Eastern slope.

The red civilization of the East was fairly constant. Between the

highest and the lowest of the tribes there was but little difference;

the Delawares of the Lakes, the Hurons, the Senecas, the Potomacs, and

all the rest of the innumerable tribes which inhabited the country east

of the Alleghanies, as well as those dwelling in the Mississippi Valley,

showed but little variation of civilization. In the West, however, it

was widely different. It is true that there were on the plains many

great tribes, such as the Sioux, the Pawnees, the Utahs, the Apaches,

and others too numerous to specify, whose general status in the roll of

civilization was of very slightly varying average; but there were also

tribes which touched the highest and lowest points of Amerind culture.

As an example of the latter, mention need be made only of the Pi-Utes,

or "Digger" Indians, a tribe as degraded as the Australian aborigines

themselves.

The Pi-Utes were the most abject and wretched of all American Indians;

they lived chiefly on roots--whence their common name among the

whites--and sometimes on offal. Yet even among these degraded people

there existed, even up to a comparatively late period, a spirit of

tribal devotion, at least if the story be true that is related of them,

and which, as it deals with women, is here reproduced without

pronouncement upon its entire credibility. It is--or was--said that, as

the products of the chase were of great importance to this people, it

was necessary that they should be armed with the most effective weapons

in their reach, and so they contrived a peculiarly deadly poison with

which to tip their small arrows. This poison was so noxious that its

distillation from the plant which furnished it a plant of which the

secret was known only to the "Diggers"--always resulted in the death of

the person preparing the decoction. It would naturally be thought that

the position of the individual who was to prepare the yearly stock of

poison for the tribe was one that would be shunned; but, on the

contrary, there was an annual contest between the oldest squaws for the

honor of becoming the sacrifice for the welfare of the tribe, and the

successful competitor proudly gave her life that the rest might live.

For this story, though cited from good authority, one may well decline

to vouch; but it is probably not untrue, since it is essentially of the

Indian spirit. Be this as it may, the Pi-Utes unquestionably represented

the most degraded aspect of Indian existence and nature. On the other

hand, there were the Yumas--often called the Apaches--and the Maricopas,

both agricultural tribes and most probably at one time dwellers in adobe

houses. They understood the principles of irrigation and attained a high

degree of Indian culture. Yet more remarkable in this respect were the

Navajos, whose name is said to signify "large cornfields" and to have

arisen from the extensive agriculture practised by the tribe. When they

were first discovered by the Spaniards in 1541 they lived in large

dwellings, partly subterranean, tilled the soil, irrigated their fields

by means of artificial watercourses, or _acequias_, and generally

displayed all the signs of the highest type of primitive civilization.

Again, there were the Pueblo Indians, as they are generally known--the

term is really ambiguous and probably includes many different tribes and

even stocks, being given indiscriminately to the inhabitants of the

ruined towns which have been found throughout Arizona and the adjacent

territory. While the civilization of these town dwellers was most

probably local rather than racial, an accident of situation and

propinquity, it was none the less decided.

Now, among such tribes, in the most advanced state of red civilization,

the status of woman was of necessity somewhat different even from that

which she enjoyed among the Sioux, Comanches, or other of the great

tent-dwelling peoples. Among the Navajos, who are chosen for example as

being in many respects typical, the son followed the gens of his mother,

the matriarchal system being in full force; while among the Sarcees, a

kindred tribe, the mother-in-law was held in such respect that the

husband of her daughter could not sit at meat with her, or even touch

her, without rendering himself amenable to a fine. Yet polygamy existed

among the Navajos, and marriage by purchase was the rule. Moreover, if

we are to believe the accounts of the early explorers of the West, among

all the southern tribes marital affection was practically unknown; the

wife was a mere slave, and in some of the tribes so lax was the marital

tie that it was not uncommon for friends to exchange wives in token of

amity. So it would seem that the status of woman, contrary to the

general rule, was higher where the outer signs of civilization were less

marked. Except in the case of the Nehaunies, a tribe of eastern Alaska,

there is no known instance of a Western gens being ruled by a woman,

though, on the other hand, there seems to be little doubt that among the

Navajos--whose religion was somewhat of the nature of that practised by

the Aztecs, with which race they were indeed associated in stock--women

at times bore a prominent part in the service of the gods, in the

ceremonial of the rites and even in the reading of omens.

Conceding due consideration to the difficulty of formulating any general

theory for the different tribes, even of the same scope of culture, it

would yet seem certain that woman's place among the Western Amerinds was

far inferior to that held by her in the East. Yet among the house

dwellers, such as the Pueblos and Navajos, her lot must have been, in

material matters, easier than that of her Eastern sister. In the

agricultural nations we find the men doing the heavier portion of the

labor incident to cultivation of the soil, though the women probably

acted as sowers, gleaners, and the like, as do the peasant women of

Europe to this day. On the whole, it is evident that the women of the

advanced Western tribes were inferior in general status, but superior in

ease of lot, to their sisters of the Atlantic slope.

It is now time to turn from the picture of the aboriginal woman as she

stood at the time of the coming of the first settlers, and trace, as far

as possible by general rule, the influences exerted upon her status by

contact with the incoming civilization of the East. It is in the

consequences of this influence that we may find an explanation of the

lowering of the status of the Amerind woman; for the effect of that

inroad of civilization was for long distinctly inimical to the

development of the Indian. How far the theory of our culture was

applicable to the needs of the Amerind can be only a subject of

speculation, for the errors of application of that theory debarred the

Indians from participation in any benefits which they might have

received thereunder. The imperfect generalization which has been applied

to the study of the American Indian is most conspicuous in error in its

failure to take account of the marked degradation which ensued in the

Indian character after the settlement of the country by the whites. It

is not necessary or practicable here to trace the witness of this

degradation in full strength; but it can be seen evidenced in the

failure of the Indian woman to maintain her status, either of position

or of character. We may indeed find a Queen Esther after the

establishment of the colonists as owners of the country; but we never

again see a Pocahontas. Under the incursions of a civilization which

assumed its most repugnant form in its dealing with the Indians, there

ensued on the part of the latter a reversion to a more barbarous type

than had before been prevalent. Nor was this strange; for the

necessities under which he found himself drove the Indian backward into

barbarism. The influence of "firewater" upon the character of the red

man has been often expatiated upon; but this was in truth but a small

factor in the sum of the general result. A conquered race, driven from

its strongholds into the primitive life of savagery to find means of

sustenance, will always relapse into a state of barbarism; history is

not wanting in examples of this truth. It was thus with the Indians of

North America. Though the process was gradual, it was none the less

sure; they found themselves involved in an unending contest for actual

existence, and such a state is highly inimical to development along

upward-tending lines. As has been inevitably the case in similar

instances, they retrograded.

It is to this cause--never perhaps sufficiently considered in studies of

the Indian nature--that must be referred much that would otherwise

appear inexplicable. Even though the early colonists were as a rule ill

disposed toward the Indians, as was befitting those who desired a

pretext for wholesale robbery of territory, yet their narratives stand

in sharp contrast to the tales of Amerind nature as we have them of

later date, and in still greater contrast to our present knowledge.

Instead of the progress for which one might look, if he should be of

those who are convinced of the admirable effects of the introduction of

our civilization, there was steady retrogression. The early colonists

found a species of civilization, however crude; but it did not advance,

or even continue. The Indians of the East, of course, felt the effect of

the influx of white men long before their brethren of the West; and we

will first glance at the effect here upon the status of woman from the

new conditions.

While before the coming of the whites there was doubtless frequent

warfare among the red men, and while the men were preeminently warriors,

yet warfare was not their normal state. Tribal feuds there were in

plenty, and these ever and again broke out into strife; but, as a rule,

the tribes lived in general amity, and not infrequently, as in the case

of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, there were treaties of alliance and

support. With the evolution and progress of the new conditions, however,

the Indian found himself an Ishmael indeed. Not only were tribal

jealousies and feuds augmented, but the red men became again and again

involved in the wars of the whites, so that strife became their constant

condition of existence. Battling for very life,--and, in their

bewilderment and lack of racial organization, often turning their

weapons against each other instead of the common foe,--the Indians were

soon reduced to the condition of mere wandering and militant tribes,

their culture forgotten and indeed inapplicable to the changed

conditions. In this state of affairs all that was not strictly military

became worthless; and so woman, save as leader or Amazon, lost her

rightful position in Indian society. She now became, indeed, a mere

chattel, a slave, even a detriment, however necessarily tolerated. She

was useful in producing warriors and in ministering to their physical

needs; but there her functions ceased. Though in rare instances, as in

the case of Catherine Montour, a woman might be heard at the council

fire, this was regarded as a survival of a custom decidedly "more

honored in the breach than the observance"; from a state of at least

partial equality with the men, she was soon, by the altered

circumstances of her race, reduced to a condition of abject slavery and

degradation.

The changed conditions were powerful over the nature as well as the

status of the Indian woman. The colonists always insisted most

strenuously upon the natural cruelty of the Indians; but we must

remember that this was not a quality confined to barbarism, since even

in the days of the first colonists the Inquisition was an established

institution, while the tortures practised in England during the reign of

"Good Queen Bess" might have seemed to the most enthusiastic Indian

warrior too cruel to be used by him on his worst enemy. There can,

however, be no question that the Indians, like so many other primitive

peoples, delighted in torture of their foes--though they did not emulate

their white fellows by torturing a man because he happened to differ

from them in a matter of theory. Now it has been seen in the case of

Pocahontas that it was a custom of the women to interfere to save the

lives of prisoners; and the existence of such a well-defined custom

argues a certain tender-heartedness among the women. Under the new

conditions of constant strife, however, this "quality of mercy" became a

thing of the past. It is the nature of woman to be enthusiastic in evil

as in good; and it soon came about that it was the women of the Indians

who were the most bloodthirsty and cruel of their race. It was they who

heaped the foulest insults upon a captive enemy, who most delighted in

the most terrible torture of that foe, who were best pleased if his

agony extorted from him the tribute of a groan.

This indulgence in the most depraved instincts of the animal nature of

course reacted. The women of the Amerinds lost all the distinctively

feminine characteristics that they had ever possessed, and with them

even their slight influence upon the men of their race. These saw in

their women the evidences of a lower nature than their own, instead of

one higher, and so they calmly and justly relegated those who were

developing toward animalism to the level of an animal. The rule was not

invariable; but it was general. There still remained a few "mothers in

Israel," women who by force of character maintained some influence in

their tribes; but, as a rule, the squaw was a mere beast of burden, a

mere "breeder of sinners." The facility in adaptation to conditions

which has always been one of woman's prominent traits had proved fatal

to the status and nature of the Amerind woman.

There were some notable exceptions. In the long Seminole war the Indians

were led by a remarkable man named Osceola. He was a half-breed, the son

of an Indian woman by a white named Powell; but Osceola, though reared

amid the environment of Caucasian civilization, never acknowledged any

relationship to the whites. The Seminoles preserved the gentile system,

in which the child followed the fortunes of its mother, and Osceola

acknowledged none but Indian racial laws. Of his mother but little is

known; but it is certain that she was a woman of stern and decided

character, that she accepted the benefits of white civilization without

admitting any gratitude therefor, and that she instilled into her great

son the principles which had come down to her from her ancestors. She

possessed great influence with her race, as much for her powers of

intellect as for her education--for she was excellently taught--and

culture; and it is probable that her influence was paramount in the

selection of her son as one of the chiefs of his nation. After his rise

to fame, we hear no more of her; but that she was a power in her day and

way cannot be doubted.

This was at a comparatively late date, and the instance is the last that

we find of an Indian woman exerting decided influence within her tribe.

Long before the dawn of the last century, the aboriginal woman had lost

all little power that had once been hers. That this loss was largely due

to her own failure to advance, and her consequent retrogression, we have

already seen, but circumstances were also largely responsible for the

lapse of feminine prestige.

It may be that one of the causes for the lost influence of women among

the Indian tribes was the lowering of the standard of morality. This is

a matter upon which it is difficult to pronounce, since morality, always

comparative in its standards and to be judged only by the racial creeds

which govern it in local applications, was peculiarly variant among the

Indian tribes of North America. Judged by the rules of modern

civilization, it might be broadly stated that morality was always at a

very low ebb among the Amerinds; but such a statement would be entirely

unwarranted by the true laws of morality. Polygamy, for example, is by

modern white races held to be immoral; but it was a very common custom

among the Amerinds, and that which is sanctioned by custom is assuredly

not immoral, though it may be counted _un_-moral. Again, as already

noted, there were tribes among which the exchange of wives, temporarily

or permanently, was held to be entirely legitimate; and, while such a

custom is very far from being in accord with Caucasian standards, it is

the custom only, and not the practisers thereof, which is to be blamed

by the just moralist. On the other hand, it may be set down as a rule of

Indian social life that adultery was severely punished. Even here the

point of view was not invariable, some tribes holding the man the more

guilty, while others visited punishment chiefly or entirely upon the

woman; but the sentiment concerning the crime in the abstract was almost

universal. It is very probable--though no authority can be found for

the statement--that it was among those tribes where the descent was in

the male line that the woman was held chiefly criminal in adultery,

since thus the purity of descent was contaminated and diverted, while

among those nations where descent was in the female line, the woman was

held less guilty than he who shared her crime. However this may be, and

there is too much confusion of statement, as well as too many diverse

laws, for us safely to generalize in the matter, certain it is that

adultery was in general looked upon as a heinous crime, usually to be

visited with death as its penalty. Yet, with all this strictness

regarding the sanctity of the marriage tie, where not abrogated by

consent, there was among many of the tribes of the West a singular lack

of respect for female purity in general. In more than one tribe, the

unmarried women were practically held in common by the unmarried men,

though immediately upon marriage the former became strangers to all but

their husbands. Here are contradictions in theory as well as practice,

but such contradictions are invariably to be found among primitive

peoples, nor can the highest civilization yet known boast entire freedom

from them.

While upon the subject of morality, it may be well to glance at the

aboriginal customs concerning divorce. As always, any inclusive

statement must be prefaced by the warning that generalization is

impossible of application to all the nations of North America; only a

few very broad rules can be laid down, and these are tried by many

exceptions. It may be stated as one of these rules that divorce was

general among the Amerinds. As is usually the case where polygamy

prevails, divorce was almost invariably at the discretion of the

husband; but this rule knew some remarkable exceptions, as among the

Pueblo Indians, where, because of the status of the husband as the

perpetual guest of his wife, divorce was chiefly in the discretion of

the women. It is, however, safe to lay down the general rule that

divorce was at the discretion of the husband and rarely needed more than

the expression of his wish to become effective and legal. This facility

of divorce, of course, made for immorality as at present understood,

since it created of marriage little more than a state of concubinage,

where the concubine could be cast off at will and made over to another

master, so that the marriage relation lacked the continuity which is its

most essential feature; but, as a matter of fact, the practice of

divorce was uncommon among most of the Amerind tribes. Whether this was

because of public sentiment overriding the customary law, as is so often

the case among people where law is entirely of custom and not of

legislation, or whether the very lack of romantic affection in most

marriages among the Indians acted as a safeguard against satiety and

disgust, or whether there were other effective but unconjecturable

reasons, cannot be known; but the fact remains that divorce, though easy

of accomplishment, was of rare practice among the American Indians as a

race.

Thus, even though it be contrary to the general judgment, it appears

that we should be justified in pronouncing the morality of the Indian

race, judged by their standards and not by those of our civilization, to

have been of at least average excellence. With the coming of the white

men, however, this state of affairs altered rapidly for the worse. Stern

moralists as the Puritans may have been in theory, they were not always

so in practice; and Antinomianism, at one time so prevalent among them,

may have had much for which to answer. If the cold Puritans were not

guiltless in this wise, what could be expected from the Cavaliers or the

warm-blooded sons of France? The theory of King James and his

councillors, that marriages with Indian maidens would be desirable, was

put into at least semi-practice in many of the colonies, and the

relations thus established were not continued strictly "under the rose."

The consequence of this immorality on the part of the Caucasians, who

were held at first by the Indians as a superior race in all ways,

reacted upon the aboriginal thought, and the standard of morality became

lowered among the redskins, particularly among their women. Here also we

find a cause of the retrogression of the Indian woman in all ways.

It is, however, a curious fact that in one instance white immorality was

the cause of great and lasting benefit to a white nation. After the

occupation of North America by the English and French had become a

settled fact, and while there was yet dispute between the two nations

for dominance on the continent, there arose among the Indians a man of

wonderful ability and wide influence over his race. He was an Ottawa,

Pontiac by name; and though by right chief of only his own tribe, he had

before long brought many other tribes to acknowledge him as their head.

Soon after the defeat of the French on the Plains of Abraham, the

English took possession of Detroit, until then held by the French, and

the Indians in the vicinity soon found cause to complain most bitterly

of the change in the masters of the region. Pontiac assembled the

neighboring tribes and proposed to drive the English from the country.

He believed, and not impossibly with reason, that if the British were

dealt a severe blow by the Indians, the French, notwithstanding their

recent discomfiture and the treaty of peace, would finish the work; and

as a preliminary step he proposed to capture Detroit, which from its

position was of the first importance to the holding of the region of the

Northwest. It must be remembered that at that time Detroit was a fort

and not a city; and Pontiac saw that his best chance to capture it was

by stratagem. The Indians were nominally at peace with the English; but

several of the tribes--among them the Ojibwas and Wyandots--assented to

the scheme proposed by Pontiac, and assembled before Detroit. It was

Pontiac's plan to propose to Major Gladwyn, in command at Detroit, a

meeting inside the fort, where a belt of wampum--the sign of

amity--should be presented by the chief and everything done that might

promote friendly relations. Suspecting nothing, Gladwyn assented, and

Pontiac's scheme seemed sure of fruition.

It chanced, however, that among the Ojibwas was a beautiful girl, named

Catherine, and that she came under the notice of Gladwyn. He was

enamored of her beauty and proposed to her to become his mistress; and

she, honored by the notice of the handsome Englishman, yielded to his

desire. It would seem that at first the girl did not know that evil

threatened the British; but one evening, when she came to the fort to

visit her lover, she was noticed by him to be absent and sad. At first

she would not tell him the reason of her grief; but at last, urged by

her love to treachery to her own people, she told him that the Indians

had been engaged in filing off the barrels of their rifles so that they

could conceal these weapons beneath their cloaks, and that the next day,

when the peace conference was to be held, the presentation by Pontiac of

the belt of wampum was to be the signal for the armed warriors to rise

upon the unsuspecting and weaponless officers in a massacre which should

become general when the gates of the fort had been seized by those

deputed for the purpose. Gladwyn was not the man to neglect such a

warning; and the next day, when Pontiac, surrounded by his apparently

peaceful but really armed warriors, was about to hand the wampum belt to

Gladwyn, a drum beat, the doors of the council chamber were thrown open,

and there appeared at every entrance a file of soldiers with levelled

muskets, while in the streets was heard the tramp of marching men

hurriedly assembling at the point of danger. Pontiac saw that he was

betrayed, and, with quick presence of mind, concluded his speech with

some words of friendship, and sat down without having made the intended

signal; but Gladwyn, less tactful than the Indian, boldly accused the

latter of treachery and dared him to do his worst. He did not, however,

take the obvious course of securing the person of Pontiac, who was

allowed to depart and who at once began a siege which for vigor and

ability is hardly surpassed in the annals even of civilized warfare.

The narrative of the siege of Detroit and the fate of the brave and able

chief who conducted it have no connection with the subject of this work;

but the incident of the preservation of the fort from Pontiac's

ingenious plot is germane to the matter in hand. Had the Indians been

successful in their scheme, it is not at all impossible that France

would have made another attempt to maintain her footing in North

America; and thus it might be said with some show of reason that

Gladwyn's immorality was the cause of the consummation of British

dominance in North America, and that an obscure Indian girl saved for

England a possession which that country had bought at the price of some

of her noblest blood.

But the sentiment that brought about the preservation of the defenders

of Detroit, and thus perhaps determined the British title to dominance,

was not the inspiration that led another Indian woman to direct the

course of the white man in America, and in so doing to contribute

largely to the work of subjugating the continent to his race. Sacajawea,

the "Bird-woman," born in the mountain region dwelt in by the Shoshones,

had been made captive, when a child, by the Blackfeet, the foes of her

people, and by them sold into slavery. Her master and husband was

Chabonneau, a French wanderer among the Indians. When Lewis and Clark,

on their famous expedition, reached the Mandan villages, they found

there the Frenchman and his Indian squaw, now a girl of sixteen, and

hired them as interpreters and guides. With her lately-born papoose

strapped to her back, this little woman's native dexterity proved

invaluable to the explorers as they journeyed along the Upper Missouri

in their canoes. Across the divide and into the mountains which were her

native home the party moved, ever helped and encouraged by Sacajawea.

Here, at length, difficulties seemingly too great to be overcome, faced

the explorers, but the little squaw, recognizing in a valley they had

reached the home from which she had been taken five years earlier, saved

the turning back of the expedition. At last she was with her long-lost

tribeswomen and winning these, their warriors were soon gathered about

her. To them she spoke of the good intentions of the white man and her

influence soon established friendship between the explorers and the

Shoshones, and their safe conduct through the territory of the tribes

was now assured and their way led to the Pacific.

Many incidents are told of the "Bird-woman's" skill, bravery, and

fidelity during the long journey from the home of the Mandans to the

shore of the Pacific and back to the point of starting. Of these mention

may be made of her saving the valuable records and instruments of the

explorers; of her sacrifice of a prized ornament to enable Lewis to

secure a much desired otter skin; and of her giving to her hungry

captain the piece of bread treasured to appease the hunger of her babe

in an emergency. These traits of Sacajawea serve to present her as a

woman of eminent personal worth, for much more than the acquired skill

of her race or the energy born of a desire to revisit her childhood home

is transparent in her actions on this memorable journey. Though in her

social relation she held a degraded position, she displayed

characteristics which place her in a lofty position as to qualities of

mind and heart. Unconscious she was, of course, of the vast results

which were to follow the expedition, to the success of which she so

largely contributed, yet she accepted the mission of her captains and

loyally furthered its accomplishment.

Before closing this brief and imperfect attempt to define the primitive

and modified status of the Amerind woman it is necessary, that the

sketch may have as much completeness as is possible, to cast a hurried

glance at the present conditions of the women of the Indian tribes that

remain to us.

While the first effects of the impinging civilization were most

deleterious to the status and nature of the aboriginal woman, there came

a time when, under conditions of comparative peace, there was ampler

opportunity for the best of that civilization to prove that it really

had a message for red men and women as well as white, though its first

words had been so marred in the saying. It would not comport with

tenderness for the good name of our country to set forth the wrongs

suffered by the Indians at the hands of those who assumed a higher place

in the scale of race; the story is written large for all those who care

to read. Beneath the combined influences of tyranny, treachery, knavery,

and every other crime that the whites could commit against them,

together with the degrading effects of the existence which was forced on

them and the pernicious results of the introduction of drunkenness as a

racial vice, the Indians went from bad to worse, until in the majority

of cases they became little better than mere savages. In this

retrogression the status of the Indian woman participated, until in

almost every tribe within the boundaries of our country she was reduced

to the state of the merest beast of burden. Her lot became harder and

harder, and was not even ameliorated by the consolations of any

religious creed that held promise of better things to come. At last,

though very slowly and very late in the history of the Amerinds, there

dawned a day when equity began to take some place in our dealings with

our red brethren, when there began some organized effort to show them

that white civilization held some benefits even for them and that

Christianity was something more than a theory. Even then, the efforts to

improve the condition of the Indians were chiefly directed toward the

education of the youths; for the girls and women there was but little

consideration shown. At length, however, this field also was entered by

some devoted men and women,--especially the latter,--and the Indian

woman, with as much wonder as joy, found that she too was regarded as

something better than a slave and brute, that she too was held as being

worthy of education and the influences of refinement. Even yet, this

message has not been borne to the majority of the women of the tribes,

at least in effective manner; but the leaven has been placed in the

lump. At first, the reclamation of the Indian woman from the degradation

into which she had fallen was a disheartening work. By long years of

maltreatment and neglect she had been rendered almost incapable of

understanding that any other lot was possible for her; in many cases,

her racial instincts and inherited education revolted against the new

order of things which was proposed to her. With the apathy in

degradation peculiar to primitive peoples, the Indian woman turned her

face from civilization and would have none of it; she was not of it, and

it was not for her. But a change of plan resulted in at least partial

success. The attempt to teach and refine the elder women--the women who

had years of experience of their racial conditions as a barrier to the

appreciation of a different order of things--was largely abandoned, and

the efforts toward amelioration were put forth for the education of the

younger women. Even so, the effort has not yet met with satisfying

success, but its results bear promise of the future.

Yet, the outlook is not bright; for the conditions which confront the

Indian woman are still not favorable for the material betterment of her

lot. Those who generalize with insufficient grasp of the premises are

fond of saying that the Indian cannot bear civilization, that it is

destructive to his health and morals; but they forget that no race has

ever become suddenly civilized, even under the most favorable auspices.

There is always the past history of that race as a controlling influence

in the result; physical and social traditions must be reckoned with

before the race can fully adapt itself to its new conditions and make

the best of them. Unfortunately, all these traditions among the Amerind

peoples are highly unfavorable to their acceptance of the civilization

peculiar to the environment into which they have been forcibly brought;

and this fact, together with the still persistent injustice of treatment

which is meted out to them, has resulted in the physical deterioration

of their race, until there now looms near the threat of extinction. In

these racial conditions the Indian woman, of course, participates; and

she has the further disadvantage of being compelled, in order to be able

to make her own the best condition that is offered her, to effect a

total change in her social relations with her own people. The Indian

warrior can perhaps be brought to understand that for him better

conditions are possible than those which have been his lot in times

past; but it is well-nigh impracticable for him to grasp the truth that

it is possible for his slave, his chattel, his beast of burden, to be

aught, to herself or to him, than that which she has been almost for

time immemorial. The tradition that woman is an inferior being has

become so deeply merged into all his conceptions of sociology, that he

cannot rid himself of it; and the woman is perforce compelled to accept

this tradition, since she cannot traverse it by any appeal that he could

understand.

Therefore, it would seem that the future of the Indian woman is not

bright. Before she can shake herself free from the trammels of tradition

and even superstition which now hold her down, it is probable that her

race will have become practically extinct. Yet before that catastrophe

it may well be that her lot will have been ameliorated, that she will

have emerged from the degradation which even now is the condition of the

greater part of her race and sex, that she will at least have regained

the status which was hers before the encroachments of a new and more

powerful civilization than that which she knew altered for the worse

every condition of her existence. Even this is the less to be hoped for

in that the Eastern tribes, which were most cultured in nearly all

respects, have now fallen by the wayside in nearly all instances, while

the remnants of the Western nations are less adapted to the reception of

higher conditions, since they have behind them few or no traditions

which make for the best tendencies in this wise. None can safely

prophesy of this matter; but, while hope is always permissible, he would

be a rash oracle who would foretell the establishment of the Amerind

woman upon a plane befitting her sex or even the best traditions of her

race.