Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1891-01-01
SoUAw SLAVES.
Female Indians Who Are Subjected to Lives
of Toll and Drudgery

Female Indians Who Are Subjected to Lives
OF Toll and Drudgery.
The women Of all Indian tribes.
doomed to hopeless bondage of slavery,
the fate of their sex in every savage
race, have but few amusements. They
accept their condition stoically, how
ever, by the unerring law Of heredity,
through ages of abuse and servile obe-
dience. The lower the tribe in the scale
Of humanity the more degraded are the
women Among the Diggers, of Oregon
and Washington, with which savages
l passed three or four years. the poor
squaws are to be pitied. Living on roots
and insects, which the women must
furnish, their existence as a tribe NAV
well be imagined to be very precarious
one. If the camas, bulb growing deep
in the ground and very sweet should
fail or the acorn and BLACK cricket"
crop be not plentiful in any year. their
winter is liable to be one Of pinching
poverty and starvation. 1 have often
looked with profound pity upon troops
of their old and young squaws under
the hot summer sun wandering, day
after day, over the prairies, the mothers
with their little ones strapped to their
backs, armed with long iron, with
which they dug the sometimes hard soil
for the roots, which furnish a large por-
ton Of their support haggard, broken
down, but never complaining of their
wearisome task.
Among many of the tribes however,
the women are allowed to have some
amusement but it is generally when
their lords are half drunk. The Dako-
tabs frequently permitted their women
to indulge in game of ball, which,
however, differed entirely from that
played by the men When the men had
worn themselves out with their own
games, and were in maudlin state from
too much whisky, but wanted to have a
little more fun, they would notify every
one that the squaws were going to have
game of ball of their own Then when
the game began the bucks would roll
over on the ground and laugh at the
curious antics of their squaws in their
awkward playing.
frequently when the men had been
very lucky in their trapping OF had been
successful in making good trades with
the whites, they would open their hearts
and donate piles of gaudy goods, such
as calicoes, ribbons and strings of
beads, besides many other bright
colored things known only to the In
dian trade and found only in the stores
Of the traders These things, which
To hn Iol 60
would be put on a stick, which itself
rested on two crotched poles upright in
the ground, and over which an old man
kept guard The old man was also the
umpire of the game. The women were
then divided into two equal parties, and
the ball, or rather two, for they play
with two, fastened to the ends of q
string eighteen or twenty inches long.
Every squaw engaged in the game holds
in each hand a small stick, on which
she must try to catch the string to
which is attached the two balls, and
when she succeeds in doing this she
throws them to and over the goal of the
side of which is playing. 1t. is re-
markably comical sight to see the wom-
en- roll over in the dust and dirt in their
frantic efforts to catch the string on
their sticks, while the men lie fiat on
the ground and roar with laughter al
them.
Notwithstanding the women are keLa
so degraded there is as much Affection
among them for their husbands ana
children as have ever witnessed among
the Caucasian race. will relate an IL
stance here which came under my owp
observation, though 1 could presen
hundreds
During the campaign of 1s6S-69 1 wal
riding with party of men and oficeD5
south Of the Arkansas. We had beeS
watching some of the cavalry unearth
three or four dead warriors who has
been killed by some scouts in terrible
fight some weeks before, and as we rod 1
into a small ravine in the sand hills Wa
came to a rude lodge, inside of which,
on a rough platform or bier, fashioned
Of green poles, reposed dead warricE
in full war dress, his shield of buffalo
hide, pipe ornamented with eagle featE-
ers, and his medicine bag" lying o1
the ground beside him. At his head, on
her knees, her hands clasped in the atti-
tude of prayer, was squaw frozen to
death. Which had first succum bed
whether the wounded chief, her huS-
band, or the devoted wife-to the awful
cold Of that winter prairie, will never
be known, but it shows her love for the
man who had, perhaps, beaten her
hundred times. Kansas City Star.