Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/168

142 and so without a thought or care for the future they gladly gave themselves to their white masters and made loving and dutiful wives, and being used to the country and at home, made very effective helpmeets. The men accepted them upon the same terms and not one man in ten dreamed at first of the relation becoming a permanent one. They were not of the class of the settlers, and each man expected in due time to return to England and there marry and found a family.

Some of them did dismiss their Indian wives. There were two ways of doing this. One was to pass the wife, often with a bonus of goods or furs, over to some other white man; and this, although a cruel process, was much more merciful than the other, which was to send the woman back to her own people.

No one who has ever seen an Indian wife of a white man sent back to her people ever wanted to see such a thing again. Sorrowfully gathering up her little belongings, lingering over the task as long as possible, the poor dumb creature would finally come to the last parting. Without outcry or struggle she would try to accept her fate. One or two good bye kisses, for the Indian women under the training of the white men soon learned to kiss, and then with her little bundles she would make her way back to the lodges.

For days and weeks she would bring little gifts of berries and game and lay them on her husband's doorstep, and for days and weeks would haunt the trading post or humbly stand near her husband's house, where he could see her, not daring to ask to be taken back, only hoping that his mood might change and that she might again be restored to her old place.

Resolute men broke down under the strain of such partings and took back their dusky wives for better or for worse until death should them part.

With the higher class of Hudson's Bay man the original marriage relation was very rarely dissolved. Little by little the light shone in upon him. Seeing at last clearly what he had done and strengthened by love of wife and children