Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1891-01-02
INDIAN WOMEN ARE SLAVES.
The Hard and Generally Tharkles5 Lot
of the BED q - Gnu.lrr

The Hard and Generally TharkIes5 Lot
of the RedsE as Squnw.
The women of all Indian tribes, doomed
to hopeless bondage of slavery, the faas
or their sex in every savage race, have but
few amusements. They accept their con-
diti0n stoicaily, however, by the unerring
law IF heredity through ages of abuse and
Servile obedience. The lower the tribe in
the scale of humanity the more degraded
are the women. Among the Diggers of
Oregon and Washington, with which saw
ages passed three or four years. the poor
squaws are to be pitied. Living on roots
and insects, which the women must fur
nish, their existence as tribe may well be
imagined to be a very precarous one.
If the camas, q bulb growing deep in the
ground and very sweet, should fail, or the
acorn and ''black cricket" crop be not plen-
tiful in any year, their winter is liable to
be one Of pinching poverty and starvation.
| 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 praries, the moth
ers, with their little ones strapped TO
their backs, armed with II long iron, with
which they sometimes dug the hard soil
for the roots, which furnish large portion
VI UuclI support, udSS5tiIu, DfOAeu uONu,
but never complaining of their wearisome
task.
Among many of the tribes, however, the
women are allowed to have some amuse
ment. The Dakotas 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, but wanted to have little more
fun, they would notify every one that the
squaws were going to have a game of bali
of their own. Then when the game began
the bucks would roll over on the ground
and laugh at the curious antics of their
souaWs in their awkward playing
Frequently, when the men had been very
lucky in their trapping or had been sue
cessful in making good trades with the
whites, they would open their hearts and
donate piles of guady goods, such as cali
Goes, ribbons and strings of beads, besides
many other bright colored things known
only to the Indian trade and found only
in the stores of the traders. These things,
which were the prizes to be contended for,
would be put on stick, which itself rest
ed 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 a string eighteen or twenty inches
long. Every squaw engaged in the same
holds in each hand small stick, on which
sieurust try to catch the string to which
is attached the two balls, and when she
succeeds in doing this she he throws them to
and over the goal of the side of when size
is playing 1t is q remarkably comical
sight to see the women 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 at them.
Notwithstanding the women are kept so
degraded there is as much affection among
them for their husbands and children as l
have ever witnessed among the Caucasian
race. l will relate one instance here which
came under my own observation though [
could present hundreds.
During the campaign of 186s-69 was
riding with a party of men and officers
south of the Arkansas. We had been watch
ing some of the cavalry unearth three or
four dead warriors who had been killed by
some scouts in terrible fight some weeks
before, and as we rode into a small ravine
in the sand hills we came to rude lodge,
inside of which, on a rude platform or bier,
fashioned of green poles, reposed a dead
warrior in full war dress, his shield of buff
falo hide, pipe ornamented with eagle
feathers and his medicine bag" lying on
the ground beside him.
At his head on her knees, her hands
clasped in the attitude of prayer, was a
squaw frozen to death. Which had first
uccumbed-whether the wounded chief,
her husband, 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 a hun
dred times.--Cor. Kansas City Star