Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/127

Rh every foot of which was cultivated by hand, yielded them everything which the unperverted human appetite might crave. Vegetables, roots and fruits in profusion, and some for sale to yield them in moderation of the white man's delicacies for the table, flour, sugar, coffee, besides clothes to cover their nakedness.

Poor old squaws! Cast off when they were no longer able to perform the demanded drudgery or young enough to stimulate the waning, fleshly desires of their lords; need any one pity them? No, indeed; for I perceived that, so far as rational existence and happiness concerned them, they were in a most enviable position.

Independent, self-sustaining, mutually assisting, time for rest and recreation, what more could these faded flowers of an unprogressive race need? Surely, in all their lives, they had not been so free in body and mind as then, albeit the rapturous days of youth had long since departed. And while they were shrunken in body, their sympathies were expansive as in youth, and if Goethe's famous apothegm be adopted as truth, maybe their altruism had increased with their years, for along with them, and clinging to them like the ivy to the leafless oak, were four homeless girls from eight to twelve years of age, the veritable flotsam of barbarism, they had picked up and brought to their asylum.

And while upon this topic, it is well enough to remark concerning the habit of those Indians and other tribes, of "marshing" (ejecting) their wives when, from age or other cause, they cease to be profitable or attractive. Presumably this is analogous to the enlightened white man's divorce court, though rather more one-sided, as the "marshing" is by the male who has the muscle to support his orders.

Many Indians keep their aged and worn wives, but take younger ones to supplement the former's deficiencies. In many such instances the supplanted wives, from choice, become hangers-on to affectionate relatives or betake themselves to the society of the low-ee-ii.