Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1888-12-01
CIRCASSIAN SLAVE GIRLS
How They Get Ready for Exhibitions
in the Markets.

Fashion Bazaar: We have wasted q
good deal of sympathy upon the Circas-
sian girls, who are sold to the highest
bidder in the Turkish slave market.
They have been brought up with an eye
to this fa.e from babyhood. They are
expected to make the family fortune; are
given the daintiest food. and their health
and beauty are matters of constant So
licitude. Warm, perfumed baths and
silken clothing keep their skins soft and
fresh and they are allowed to do no work.
The rest of the family usually fare hard,
eat coarse food and do rough labor.
When the future slave girl has reached
budding womanhood she is disposed Of to-
a dealer in slaves, who lets his best Gus
toners know that he possesses a treasure
almost priceless, and all her virtues and
beauties are detailed with the usual orien-
tai eXaggeration. Finally some rOyaR
princess or rich pasha's wife expresses Il
wish to see her, and, extra care having
been taken with her bath and dress, she
Is presented for inspection.
From long preparation and jealous
guarding from the sun, she has a skin ag
white rs milk, and her naturally beautiful
type of face is adorned with the usual
tints Of kohl to the eyebrows and eye
lashes and rouge to the full red lips. Her
exquisitely shaped nails glow with henna,
and her own luXuriant hair is intertwinel
with meshcs of silk for the prophet
curses women who join their own hair to
that Of another) till it reaches her ankles
in an uneve number Of tails, an even
number being forbidden.
She gives samples OF her accomplish
ments, musical, gymnastic and otherwise.
Accepted. she is at once clothed with q
rich silk dress, and receives a present of
IA necklace or bracelet as an earnest Of
favor before She joins her fellow slaves
Beyond assisting her mistress in the toilet.
accompanying her in her drives and hand
ing her coffee and cigarettes, she has little
to DO. She is an ornamental appendage
rather than a servant. When the time
comes for her TO be married, her owner
chooses a husband and gives a rich dover,
and many of the marriages Of slave glrls
eclipse in magniticence ever those OF the
Weather class.
The erstwhile b%arefooted, ragged little
Circassian from Turkoman's land is now
IL ~ Va boi ? y WAL NE
her own, but she would laugh if you sug-
gested to her taat there was anything de-
grading in their position or had been in
her own. The degradation and the hard
ship are simply ideas formed inignorance
of the facts and conditions of oriental
domestic life and have no placein reality.
OF course there is another side 10 the
picture, but even that is not q very dark
one. The girl may fall under the dis
pleasure Of the master and mistress ana
will then get punished. She may be
locked mp for a few hours, or, if her mis-
tress is hot tempered, have her hair pulltd
and receive a sound boxing on the ear.
Perhaps in very rare and severe cases a
severe beating may be administered, but
the same might, and would often happen
in the case Of a paid servant A recon
Citation, however, shortly takes place
and the peace is cementcd with a present
Of a new dress or trinket.