Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/308

Rh the fret and the disquiet, the ennui and the fatigue, which is the consequence of a brief hour's social worry; they knew not the disgust and the bitterness which is produced by little things, little vexations, which one is ashamed to feel, but which one must feel nevertheless. Their world might be monotonous, but in comparison it was calm and fresh within the narrow wigwam, while without there was free space, and the rustling forest open to them with all its fresh winds and odours. Ah!

But again I bethought myself of the Indian women; bethought me of their life and condition; with no other purpose and no other prospect in life than to serve a husband whom they have seldom chosen themselves, who merely regards them as servants, or as a cock regards the hens around him. I saw the wife and the mother humiliated by the entrance of the new wife into the husband's dwelling, and his affection being turned to the stranger in her sight, and in the same home, and in the firelight of that same hearth which had been kindled on her marriage day,—saw her despised or neglected by the man who constituted her whole world. Ah! The wigwam, the free space of the forest, had no longer peace or breathing room for the anguish of such a condition; alleviation of its agony or its misery is found merely in degradation or death. Winnona's death-song on the rock by Lake Pepin; Ampato Sapa's death-song on the waters of the Mississippi when she and her children sought for the peace of forgetfulness in their foaming depths; and many other of their sisters who yet to this day prefer death to life, all testify how deeply tragical is the fate of the Indian woman.

And again I bethought myself of love-warmed homes in the cultivated world, in the North as well as in the South; homes such as are frequent, and which become still more and more so among a free and Christian people, where the noble woman is the noble man's equal in