The Girl Market

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_ In the vast majority of instances the Indians did not simply try to curb woman's efforts to secure freedom of choice by intimidating her or inventing warning stories, but held the reins so tightly that a woman's having a will of her own was out of the question. It may be said that there are three principal stages in the evolution of the custom of choosing a wife. In the first and lowest stage a man casts his eyes on a woman and tries to get her, utterly regardless of her own wishes. In the second, an attempt is made to win at least her good-will, while in the third--which civilized nations are just entering--a lover would refuse to marry a girl at the expense of her happiness. A few Indian tribes have got as far as the second stage, but most of them belong to the first. Provided a warrior coveted a girl, and provided her parents were satisfied with the payment he offered, matters were settled without regard to the girl's wishes. To avoid needless friction it was sometimes deemed wise to first gain the girl's good-will; but this was a matter of secondary importance. "It is true," says Smith in his book on the Indians of Chili,

"that the Araucanian girl is not regularly put up for
sale and bartered for, like the Oriental houris; but
she is none the less an article of merchandise, to be
paid for by him who would aspire to her hand. She has
no more freedom in the choice of her husband than has
the Circassian slave."

"Marriage with the North Californians," says Bancroft (I., 349),

"is essentially a matter of business. The young brave must
not hope to win his bride by feats of arms or softer wooing,
but must buy her of her father like any other chattel, and
pay the price at once, or resign in favor of a richer man.
The inclinations of the girl are in nowise consulted; no
matter where her affections are placed, she goes to the
highest bidder. The purchase effected, the successful suitor
leads his blushing property to his hut and she becomes his
wife without further ceremony. Wherever this system of
wife-purchase obtains the rich old men almost absorb the
youth and beauty of the tribe, while the younger and poorer
men must content themselves with old and ugly wives. Hence
their eagerness for that wealth which will enable them to
throw away their old wives and buy new ones."[226]

[FOOTNOTE 226: How California marriages were made in the good old times we may see from the account in Hakluyt's _Collection of Early Voyages_, 1810, III., 513:

"If any man had a daughter to marry he went
where the people kept, and said, I have a
daughter to marry, is there any man here that
would have her? And if there were any that
would have her, he answered that he would
have her, and so the marriage was made."]

A favorable soil for the growth of romantic and conjugal love! The Omahas have a proverb that an old man cannot win a girl, he can only win her parents; nevertheless if the old man has the ponies he gets the girl. The Indians insist on their rights, too. Powers tells of a California (Nishinam) girl who loathed the man that had a claim on her. She took refuge with a kind old widow, who deceived the pursuers. When the deception was discovered, the noble warriors drew their arrows and shot the widow to death in the middle of the village amid general approval. I myself once saw a poor Arizona girl who had taken refuge with a white family. When I saw the man to whom she had been sold--a dirty old tramp whom a decent person would not want in the same tribe, much less in the same wigwam--I did not wonder she hated him; but he had paid for her and she was ultimately obliged to live with him.

Of the Mandans, Catlin says (I., 119) that wives "are mostly treated for with the father, as in all instances they are regularly bought and sold." Belden relates how he married a Sioux girl. One evening his Indian friend Frombe came to his lodge and said he would take him to see his sweetheart.

"I followed him and we went out of the village to where some girls were watching the Indian boys play at ball. Pointing to a good-looking Indian girl, Frombe said: 'That is Washtella,'

"'Is she a good squaw?' I inquired.

"'Very,' he replied.

"'But perhaps she will not want to marry me,' I said.

"'She has no choice,' he answered, laughing.

"'But her parents,' I interposed, 'will they like this kind of proceeding?'

"'The presents you are expected to make them will be more acceptable than the girl,' he answered."

And when full moon came the two were married.

Blackfeet girls, according to Grinnell,

"had very little choice in the selection of a husband.
If a girl was told she had to marry a certain man, she
had to obey. She might cry, but her father's will was
law, and she might be beaten or even killed by him if
she did not do as she was ordered."

Concerning the Missasaguas of Ontario, Chamberlain writes, that in former times,

"when a chief desired to marry, he caused all the
marriageable girls in the village to come together and
dance before him. By a mark which he placed on the
clothes of the one he had chosen her parents knew she
had been the favored one."

Of the Nascopie girls, M'Lean says that "their sentiments are never consulted."'

The Pueblos, who treat their women exceptionally well, nevertheless get their wives by purchase. With the Navajos "courtship is simple and brief; the wooer pays for his bride and takes her home." (Bancroft, L, 511.) Among the Columbia River Indians, "to give a wife away without a price is in the highest degree disgraceful to her family." (Bancroft, I., 276.) "The Pawnees," says Catlin,[227] "marry and unmarry at pleasure. Their daughters are held as legitimate merchandise.... The women, as a rule, accept the situation with the apathy of the race." Of the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and other Plains Indians, Dodge says that girls are regarded as valuable property to be sold to the highest bidder, in later times by preference to a white man, though it is known that he will probably soon abandon his wife. In Oregon and Washington "wives, particularly the later ones, are often sold or traded off.... A man sends his wife away, or sells her, at his will." (Gibbs, 199.)

[FOOTNOTE 227: _Smithsonian Rep._, 1885, Pt. II., p. 71.] _

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