Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/14

4 them, and are, therefore, reckless of whatever may befall them. This is a state of things not calculated to promote the interest of any country, if long continued, and here especially it is to be deeply deplored.

The intermarriage of whites with Indians is fraught with many and serious evils. It has been asserted that it elevates the Indian at the expense of the white race. While we question the fact of its morally elevating the Indian race, we are fully sensible of its demoralizing inﬂuence upon the white. The effect of this species of amalgamation, as seen here, and we believe, everywhere else, has been an almost instantaneous degeneration of the white, with no visible improvement of the Indian; while the offspring are found to possess not only all the vices inherent in the Indian, but unite with them the bad qualities of the whites. This mixture of the races has produced some of the most noted outlaws of the Southwestern States. It will create men of the same stamp here. It is the knowledge of this fact that has led to the enactment of laws prohibiting these unnatural alliances.

But where there are no white women what are the white men to do? is a question that has often been asked here. Occasionally we hear of a young man going to the States and getting a wife, or writing for one to come out. But it is not every young man who has female acquaintances in the States of suitable age or disposition for marriage. What are they to do who unhappily have no female acquaintances at all? We hardly know what to advise except to wait patiently and bide their time. A very long time cannot now elapse ere we shall have marriageable females enough in our own midst. The New England towns are full to overﬂowing of intelligent young women well trained to household duties, with no possible chance of ﬁnding husbands at home. Sooner or later the tide of female immigration will set in. Of this there is no uncertainty; it is only a question of time, but that we would hasten.

An appeal may, with propriety, be made to the good sense of the large surplus of young women of the crowded cities of the Northern and Eastern States, where all branches of female labor are reduced to starving rates of pay, and where