Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1891-03-13
FEMALE INDIAN SLAVES.


FEMALE INDIAN SLAVES.
squaws Doomed to Life Of Bondage by
Their Lazy Lords.
The women of all Indian tribes,
doomed to a hopeless bondage of
slavery, the fate of their sex in every
savage race, have but few amusements,
says writer. They accept their con-
dition stoically, however, by the un-
erring law of heredity through ages Of
abuse and servile obedience. The
lower the tribe in the scale of humani-
ty the more degraded are the women.
Among the Diggers of Oregon and
Washington. with which savagcs
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 may well be imagined to
be very precarious one. If the camas.
a bulb growing deep in the ground and
very sweet, should fail, or the acorn
and ''black cricket" crop be not plenti-
full in any year, their winter is liable to
be one of pinching poverty and starva-
ton / have often looked with pro-
found pity upon troops of their old and
young squaws under the hot summer
sun uwanderinS day after day. over
the prairies, the mothers with their lit
tie ones strapped to their backs. armed
with a long iron. with which they dug
sometimes hard soil for the roots.
which furnish a large portion of their
support. haggered, broken down, but
never complaining of the 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, how
ever. 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
a game of ball of their own. Then when
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, or had been
successful in making good trades with,
the whites. they would open their
hearts and donate piles of gaudy goodsl
-
beads, besides many other bright-co3
ored things known only to the Indian
trade and found only in the stores Of
the traders. These things, which were
to be the prizes commended for, would
be put on 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
umpire of the game. The women
were then divided into two equal par
ties, and the ball or rather two,
for they play with two, fastened
to the ends of string eighteen or
twenty inches long. Every squaw en-
gagged 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 on which she is play
ing. 1t is a 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 TIE women are kept
SO degraded, there is as much affection
among them for their husbands and chill.
dren as 1 have ever witnessed among
the Caucasian race. will relate one
instance here which came under my own
observation, though l could present
hundreds.
During the campaign of 1868 60 was
riding with party of men and officers
south of the Arkansas. We had been
watching some of the cavalry uneartb
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 a rude lodge, inside of which,
on a rough platform or bier. fashioned
of green poles, rcposed dead warrior
in full war dress. his shield of buffalo
hides, pipe Ornamented with engle feath-
ers, 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 squaw frozen to death.
Which had first succumbed-the wound
ed 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 hundred times
Kansas Cifv Star