Indian girl

“ For, wherever one finds the sort of “modesty” that is ashamed of natural and God-given functions, there is either a mental perversion for which the victim is to be pitied, or a moral perversion which is to be reprobated. Every Indian girl is given fully to understand what the function means, with all its possibilities, and she is taught to pray that, when the time comes, she may have a lover, and that he may be a good husband, and that, in due time, she may be the happy and healthy mother of many happy and healthy children. ”

“ From fifteen to twenty the Indian girl was a warm-blooded creature, not at all bad -looking, but after this she aged rapidly; at thirty was old, and at forty fit only to tan buckskins and do heavy work. ”

“ The Indian girl has considerable personal vanity, is fond of ornaments and show, and seeks to attract attention by rich clothes, or studied graces. Even in their national attitudinizing, and the alluring nautch, repose and quiet seem to distinguish her from the laughing, romping, dress-neglecting Abyssinian, who, to attract notice, affects the child, and endeavours to please by artlessness and simplicity. ”

“ A great many of the mothers feel that the present system of education for women in India is wrong, and that the text-books are not the ones that should be adopted for the use of Indian children. The stories have little to do with Indian life, and the children do not understand them. For instance, stories of snowstorms, ice, and things that are to be seen in a foreign land, are far above the understanding of the average Indian girl. ”

“ The Indian girl is capable of very warm friendships with girl companions. She goes to school, but the period of education is too short, as she usually marries before she is eighteen. At six- teen years of age, she is often already a mother. ”

“ These earliest American girls were not dowered with the fatal gift of beauty as we understand beauty. Indeed, it is quite generally admitted that the American Indian girl is not and never was so pretty as the girls of some of the Pacific islands, for example. ”

“ The Indian girl thus reared in some private family is commonly very useful until she attains the age of twelve or fifteen, when she looks out for a mate, with whom she can fly to the hills, to be happy in a smoky hut, and on a llama-skin couch ”

“ It has been proven that Indian girls can be educated, their minds are keen and eager, they are Christian, many of them, in a sense which girls of America cannot comprehend. Their task is infinitely greater than yours. If they fail, the redemption of Indian womanhood will not be realized, and so we see them taking as the college emblem, not the beautiful, decorated brass lamp of the palace, but the common, little clay lamp of the poorest home and going out with the flickering flame to lighten the deep darkness of their land. College girls in America sometimes wear their degree as a decoration. ”

“ The Indian woman has, so far, been only a beast of burden. The girl, when arrived at maturity, was disposed of like an article of trade. The Indian wife was treated by her husband alternately with animal fondness, and with the cruel brutality of the slave-driver. Nothing will be more apt to raise the Indians in the scale of civilization than to stimulate their attachment to permanent homes, and it is woman that must make the atmosphere and form the attraction of the home. She must be recognized, with affection and respect, as the center of domestic life. ”

“ Indian women, wrinkled and careworn, plodded patiently about on various businesses. Indian girls, full of fun and mischief, drifted here and there in arm-locked groups of a dozen, smiling, whispering among themselves, ready to collapse toward a common centre of giggles if addressed by one of the numerous woods-dandies. Indian men stalked singly, indifferent, stolid. Indian children of all sizes and degrees of nakedness darted back and forth, playing strange games. ”

“ If they grew up they were to become the burden-bearers of their masters of the other sex. An Indian mother has been known to take her little baby girl out into the woods and stuff its mouth with grass and leaves and leave it to die. ”

“ Besides, these are mercifully rare so far. The Indian woman is a nice, shy, retiring sort of creature, very backward, and really without much use for new fashioned costumes, as she is never allowed out to show them off. ”

“ When an indian becomes enamoured of a female, or wishes to marry her, he informs her father of his intention, and if his proposals be accepted, the father at a time agreed upon sends his daughter on a pretended errand. The bridegroom with some of his friends is secreted on the route she has to take: he seizes the girl, and carries her to his house, where not unfrequently her father and his friends have already arrived to partake of the nuptial feast, and receive the stipulated presents, which consist of horses, horned cattle, maize, ponchos, &c. ”

“ Perhaps there are little children in some of the beautiful homes in the cities who cannot understand that the Indians are not all born grown up, with feathers on their heads and tomahawks in their hands. One little blue-eyed girl once said to me with a very long O-o-o-o and her hand over her mouth, “Oh, o-h! I did not know there were little Indian boys and girls!” but let me tell you, little Golden Hair, there are Indian boys and girls. ”

“ French and Scotch and English half-breeds, as they were, they understood how she was making a fight for all who were half-Indian, half-white, and watched her with a furtive devotion, acknowledging her superior place, and proud of it.
“I will not stay here,” said the Indian mother, with sullen stubbornness. “I will go back beyond the Warais. My life is my own life, and I will do what I like with it.”
The girl started, but became composed again on the instant. “Is your life all your own, mother?” ”

“ Then the primitive industries were taken into account, and perhaps the fact that the mother was among the Indians the center of the community, the chief laborer, the owner of all the property and the giver of the family name, may have had influence in the choice of their thoughts and ways of symbolism. The picture writing, the delicate craft of bead embroidery and bead weaving had a strong appeal. There was much about Indian lore and Indian craft that could beckon modern girls along a path of adventure, poetry and romance into the realms of industry, service and patriotism. ”

“ Sentiments of gratitude do not last long. However, we must in this case always except those who were reared in the homes of white people. With few exceptions (when perhaps poor methods or little care in their education, or perchance bad example and ill-treatment dominated) , these Indian girls are virtuous, assiduous, disinterested, and very well-disposed toward all the different branches of service and ready to learn whatever they are taught. They are modest, and are fond of dressing themselves nicely and decently. ”

“ The Indian girls arrive at the time of puberty before twelve years old, indeed commonly much sooner, at which time they are married. The ceremony consists simply in the young man’s offering a quantity of game and fish of his own catching, which, if she accepts, he next proposes the question, “Will you be my wife?” ”

“ If they are neither numerous nor attractive, placed side by side with the rich nursery stores of more refined life, it is yet a pleasant fact to have found such things even existing at all amongst a people supposed to possess so few of the amenities of life, and to have so little versatility of character.
Meagre as these specimens seem, they yet involve no small degree of philological diligence, as nothing can be more delicate than the inflexions of these pretty chaunts, and the Indian woman, like her white sister, gives a delicacy of intonation to the roughest words of her language. ”

“ Looking up, she beheld a tall woman clothed in a long and flowing robe of white goat-skin; her mocassins were of a blood-red colour; her eyes were black as the shell of the butter-nut; her hair, which was also black, was dressed with gay flowers. After surveying the weeping Namata-washta for some time in silence, and with an appearance of much compassion, she said to her in a gentle voice, "Woman, why art thou weeping?"
"I am weeping," replied the poor Indian woman, "because I have borne my husband no children!"
"And therefore thou weepest, deluded and infatuated woman! ”

“ I never saw an Indian woman of the age of thirty, but what her eyes were sunk, her forehead wrinkled, her skin loose and shrivelled, and her whole person, in short, forbidding; yet, when young, their faces and persons are really pleasing, not to say sometimes very captivating. ”

“ Among friends she sparkles, and laughs and gossips with her neighbors over a figurative back fence just as you do in Virginia or Vermont. Just living, loving, joyous, or sorrowing women are these brown-skinned sisters of ours.
Were I looking for inspiration to paint a Madonna I would turn my steps toward the Painted Desert, and there among the Indian people I would find my model. Indian mothers are real mothers. Their greatest passion is mother-love. ”

“ The Indians were astonished to see the women so big around and wearing such gorgeous things on their heads. Of course the ladies quickly looked the Indians all over at a glance, just as they would at any curious thing in a show, and as they have a right to, and they especially looked at the feathers on the Indians' heads. At the same time the Chiefs, who were equally interested in the ladies' dresses, almost surrounded the women, before they realized the situation. You know that an Indian feels that it is proper to examine carefully anything that interests him. ”

“ Worden are not faddists. They are earnestly and steadfastly endeavoring to fulfill the trust committed to them, to develop their children into strong healthy women, to strengthen their powers of endurance, and develop their physical faculties by bringing them up in accordance with all the laws of health.”
Another thing that I would have white women learn from their Indian sisters, is a thing they used to know but are rapidly forgetting. That is, the joy of suckling their own children. An Indian mother that does not suckle her own child is almost unknown. ”

“ In her youth she hunted, and was accounted the surest eye and fleetest foot among the women of her tribe. Her talents, energy, activity, and strength of mind, and her skill in all the domestic avocations of the Indian women, have maintained comfort and plenty within her dwelling in spite of the losses sustained by her husband, while her descent from the blood of their ancient chiefs renders her an object of great veneration among the Indians around, who, in all their miseries, maladies, and difficulties, apply to her for aid or for counsel. ”

“ Their bearing is dignified; their faces are earnest and solemn; and each one treads the earth as a king.
Indian women are sometimes very handsome when young; but the quantity of colored earth they use as paint does not hide half the dirt upon their faces. ”

“ As a contrast to the señoras, with their overdressed beauties, were the poor Indian women, trotting across the square, their black hair plaited with dirty red ribbon, a piece of woollen cloth wrapped round them, and a little mahogany baby hanging behind, its face upturned to the sky, and its head jerking along, somehow, without its neck being dislocated. The most resigned expression on earth is that of an Indian baby. ”

“ Their sister is a highly intelligent and cultivated young lady, as one often meets in any society. These that I have mentioned are young, and pertain to the new order of things; but there are aged men and aged women still living, who give us some idea of the Indian as he was. I have been in their houses, and become acquainted with their hearts, and not among any people have I seen firesides where love and friendship wore a brighter smile, or hearts throbbed with more genuine Christian sympathy. ”

“ The lot of an Indian woman is a hard one, from the very time she begins it, on a papoose-board, until she leaves it, and is wrapped in her best blanket and hoisted into some tree, or buried deep under a pile of rocks. ”

“ Protected by their isolation from other tribes, they worked out their ideas undisturbed—with every incentive for excellence they had reached a height in basketry when the American first disturbed them which has never been equaled—not only by no other Indian tribe, but by no other people in the world in any age. These stolid Indian women have a knowledge of materials and their preparation, a delicacy of touch, an artistic conception of symmetry, of form and design, a versatility in varying and inventing beautiful designs, and an eye for color, which place their work on a high plane of art. ”

“ To describe an Indian woman is no easy task for one who lives among them, for every peculiarity becomes so familiar, and so interwoven with our common everyday experience, that we forget how strange and unlike white women she appeared to us at first. ”

“ They are cold in their family affections; and though the mothers are very fond of their babies, they seem comparatively indifferent to them as they grow up. It is, indeed, impossible to rely upon the affection of an Indian, even though isolated cases of remarkable fidelity have been known among them. But I have been told over and over again, by those who have had personal experience in the matter, that you may take an Indian child, bring him up, treat him with every kindness, educate him, clothe him, and find him to be a useful and seemingly faithful member of the household ”