Indian woman

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the whole he thinks that the condition of the Indian women is as comfortable as it is possible to render it by any arrangement which would not completely change their mode of life. To withdraw the men from the chase and confine them to the culture of the ground, would render the Indians an agricultural and not a hunting people. Still the condition of the Indian woman is a miserable and degraded one,—a condition of incessant labour and care. ”

“ INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE There is no woman in the world who is so bound down by custom, so tied to the wheel of conventionality, as is the Indian woman, both Hindu and Mohammedan. In the olden times the ancient law-makers realized the danger menacing a people surrounded by an inferior race, as were the natives of India compared to their Aryan invaders, and instituted that remarkable social system that peculiarly affects the women of the country, and is the cause of many of the evils that has made her life one not to be envied—caste. ”

“ Has the Indian, has the white woman, as noble a feeling of life and its uses, as religious a self-respect, as worthy a field of thought and action, as man? If not, the white woman, the Indian woman, occupies an inferior position to that of man. ”

“ It is difficult for the white men and women of this day to conceive of the Indian code of morals or to appreciate how perfectly it fitted their wandering life or to understand how trustfully and innocently the young Indian woman met the white strangers when they came. No exploring or hunting party, however difficult or arduous the journey, ever lacked Indian women to go with it, and no white man had any difficulty at any time in obtaining a companion for his camp or home, nor from the Indian point of view was there anything indelicate or immoral in this. ”

“ Long centuries of oppression made the Indian woman thankful for even a poor specimen of a man. Thrice happy was her lot when she was taken for wife by a decent white man. In her inarticulate way she greatly rejoiced and sacrificed herself for him gladly. There are many people in Oregon and Washington who have Indian blood in their veins, and few, very few, of them have ever had reason to blush for their Indian mothers. ”

“ The Indian woman has a finer development, as a rule, than the white woman. We may, in part, discover the cause for this in the prevalence of the custom, already alluded to, of the mother carrying her offspring on her back, which, with its not undue strain on the dorsal muscles, no doubt, promotes and conserves muscular strength. The Indian woman being commonly a wife and mother before a really full maturity has been reached, or any absolute unyieldingness of form been contracted, the figure yet admits of such-like beneficent processes being exerted upon it. ”

“ The Indian woman wields a strong influence over her husband, and has more of a place in the life around her than we imagine, from the stories we hear of unhappy days spent “Behind Zenana Bars.” We are apt to consider the secluded, shut-in Eastern woman as a cowed, frightened creature, afraid to say her soul is her own, while among the better class, at least, it is quite the contrary. ”

“ At length, however, this field also was entered by some devoted men and women,--especially the latter,--and the Indian woman, with as much wonder as joy, found that she too was regarded as something better than a slave and brute, that she too was held as being worthy of education and the influences of refinement. Even yet, this message has not been borne to the majority of the women of the tribes, at least in effective manner ”

“ The Indian woman is the true and faithful companion of her husband's fortunes. She works incessantly at her appropriate tasks. She grinds the corn for the tortillias and atolé of the family, and carries them to her husband wherever he is at work; she weaves, in her rude manner, all the materials of cotton or wool that are worn by her household; she makes the garments of her spouse and children; she keeps the domestic premises in order without an assistant ”

“ This pride dominates some Indian women. They look up to their husbands find serve them still, but the love that prompts it is wholly unlike the old slavish fear. They work as hard, but with a new motive.
The Indian woman now knows the children playing about her door will not be torn from her". In heathenism time if a woman had no children, or her children died, it was considered a sufficient reason for putting her away for a younger, stronger woman. This is not allowed by Christian Indians. The only living child of a Christian chief had no children. ”

“ THE INDIAN AND THE SEX QUESTION Having studied medicine somewhat in my life, I have been permitted as a “medicine man” to know more of the intimate life of the Indian women than many white men. In this article I propose to give the results of many observations in this field, with full assurance that there are many things the white woman may learn from the Indian, both in her treatment of herself and her children. ”

“ It is to be hoped, however, that as more liberal views respecting women gain ground generally in India, their influence may spread to the Mahometan section of the community.
It would be impossible to close this brief survey of the woman question in India without alluding to the very great sympathy and help shown to Indian women in America, and by American ladies in India. American missionaries and lady doctors are working hard in India itself, and the United States have become a second home to more than one brave Indian woman. ”

“ There is a mistaken idea generally prevalent, that the Indian woman is treated with contempt, arising from the well-known fact, that certain offices and labors, accounted as menial among the whites, or as improper to be imposed upon women, are always performed by them among the Indians. ”

“ I should observe, that when an Indian woman gives herself to a white man, she considers herself as his wife to all intents and purposes. If forsaken by him, she considers herself as injured, not disgraced. There are great numbers of white settlers and traders along the borders living thus with Indian women. Some of these have been persuaded by the missionaries or magistrates to go through the ceremony of marriage ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was astonishing what good women the native women were, and how patiently and honestly they toiled and suffered for their worthless husbands. Afterwards when the white men came, the chance to marry one of the King George men or Bostons was to an Indian woman a chance to enter paradise. No white husband was ever as bad as an Indian, and however drunken and worthless the white man might be considered to be by his own people, he was a marvel of husbandly virtues in the eyes of his native wife. ”

“ The girls and women, too, ride almost as much as the boys and men, and always astride. If anything were needed to demonstrate to an Indian woman the inferiority of a white woman it would be that she sits on a side-saddle. ”

“ The woman who has cast in her lot with an Indian, whose savagery is only veneered with civilized manners, will repent of her act, as all her sisters in misery have done before her. As a husband the American Indian is not a model, for even long training among white people fails to uproot his native idea that a woman is simply provided to bear him children and to do hard work which is beneath his dignity.— N. Y. Press. ”

“ Battling for very life,--and, in their bewilderment and lack of racial organization, often turning their weapons against each other instead of the common foe,--the Indians were soon reduced to the condition of mere wandering and militant tribes, their culture forgotten and indeed inapplicable to the changed conditions. In this state of affairs all that was not strictly military became worthless; and so woman, save as leader or Amazon, lost her rightful position in Indian society. She now became, indeed, a mere chattel, a slave, even a detriment, however necessarily tolerated. ”

“ These women assured me that all the work of the sitios—the making of farinha, the fishing, the turtle-hunting—was stopped for want of hands. The appearance of things certainly confirms this, for one sees scarcely any men about in the villages, and the canoes one meets are mostly rowed by women.
I must say that the life of the Indian woman, so far as we have seen it, and this is by no means the only time that we have been indebted to Indians for hospitality, seems to me enviable in comparison with that of the Brazilian lady in the Amazonian towns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In these racial conditions the Indian woman, of course, participates; and she has the further disadvantage of being compelled, in order to be able to make her own the best condition that is offered her, to effect a total change in her social relations with her own people. ”

“ It is now time to turn from the picture of the aboriginal woman as she stood at the time of the coming of the first settlers, and trace, as far as possible by general rule, the influences exerted upon her status by contact with the incoming civilization of the East. It is in the consequences of this influence that we may find an explanation of the lowering of the status of the Amerind woman; for the effect of that inroad of civilization was for long distinctly inimical to the development of the Indian. ”

“ In this northern world distinctions fall away and all are equal. As a usual thing, the Indian regards a white woman impersonally or with a half-contemptuous indifference. To him, we are frail, die-away creatures deplorably deficient in energy, yet, strange to relate, wholly lacking in the spirit of obedience. ”

“ Their squaws do not possess as regular and fine features as the men; but, this may be said to be true of most of the wild tribes of savages in North America, for it requires an enormous stretch of the imagination to call them handsome, while many of the men are fine looking. Hard work spoils the beauty of the Indian women. To admire an Indian woman one must seclude himself from the society of other females ”

“ In this connection the author concludes that the morality of the Indian woman is of at least average excellence. That contact with the white man arrested--or as the author maintains "degraded"--the progress of civilization, slow as that progress may have been among the aborigines, cannot be doubted, nor that there was "a reversion to a more barbarous type than had before been prevalent."
As we consider the principles of government among the North American tribes we find that the matriarchal system prevailed. ”

“ But she thought the position of woman was changing for the better. Even among the Indians a better feeling is beginning to prevail. It is Indian etiquette for the man to kill the deer or bear, and leave it on the spot where it is struck down for the woman to carry home. She must drag it over the ground or carry it on her back as best she may, while he quietly awaits her coming in the family wigwam. A certain Indian, after observing that white folks did differently by their women, once resolved to follow their example. ”

“ The affection which grows up between the sexes was supposed by the early writers upon the character of the Indians not to exist among them, and probably the sentiment and refinement of it do not; but circumstances and habit bind together the Indian man and woman as strongly as any known ties. When the Indian grows up to manhood he requires a woman to make him tortillas, and to provide him warm water for his bath at night. ”

“ The other was a woman, who being taken captive, found means to kill her captor, and make her escape, and the tribe were so struck with admiration at the courage and calmness she displayed on the occasion, as to make her chieftainess in her own right.
Notwithstanding the homage paid to women, and the consequence allowed her in some cases, it is impossible to look upon the Indian women, without feeling that they do occupy a lower place than women among the nations of European civilization. ”

“ If the favorite wife had been killed, the least the other wife expected would be a tomahawking, or an arrow shot into her, perfectly regardless as to whether death would be the consequence or not. Women among Indians are bought, paid for, and are the property of the purchaser the same as his horses. Their lives are of course more valuable than those of animals, and every Indian regrets the loss of his woman. Yet when he has bought them he expects them to do their duty, not quarrel nor render his lodge disagreeable, or if so they must expect to be severely punished. ”

“ But this hatred in other nations prompts to the very manifestation of which an Indian was never guilty. Their treatment of captives from among Indian nations was the same, and I know not that there has been any satisfactory solution of a characteristic which has been found among only one other civilized, Christian or barbarous nation. A wanderer among the western tribes once asked an Indian why they thus honored their women, and he said, “The Great Spirit taught them, and would punish them if they did not.” Among the Germans there existed the same respect for woman, till they became civilized. ”