Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/303

Rh favour of the pure feminine nature of these poor women, and shows that they are deserving of a better lot. As young girls, their choice is seldom consulted with regard to marriage. The wooer spreads out before the girl's father his buffalo and beaver skins, he carries to the mother some showy pieces of cloth and trinkets, and the girl issold. If she makes any opposition, the father threatens to cut off her ears and her nose; and she, equally obstinate with him, cuts the matter short byhanging herself; for this is the mode of death which is generally selected. It is true that the desire for revenge may be the mainspring of suicide, and it is well known that the Indian women emulate the men in cruelty to their enemies and war-captives; still their hard lives, as women, are not the less to be deplored; and their strength to die rather than degrade themselves, proves that these children of nature are more high minded than many a woman in the higher ranks of civilisation. The beauties of the forest are prouder and nobler than are frequently they of the saloon. But true it is that their world is a weary one, and affords them nothing but the husband whom they must serve, and the circumscribed dwelling of which he is the master.

We drank tea on a considerable island in the Mississippi, above the falls, at a beautiful home, where I saw comforts and cultivation, where I heard music, saw books and pictures,—such life, in short, as might be met with on the banks of the Hudson; and how charming it was to me! Here, too, I found friends in its inhabitants, even as I had there. The dwelling had not been long on the island; and the island in its autumnal attire looked like a little paradise, although still in its half-wild state.

As to describing how we travelled about, how we walked over the river on broken trunks of trees which were jammed together by the stream in chaotic masses, how we climbed and clambered up and down, among, over