Sullivan republican. [volume] (Laporte, Pa.) 1883-1896, 1891-04-17
FEMALE INDIAN SLAVES.
WOMEN OF ALL TRIBES DOOMED
TO A HOPELESS BONDAGE.

Allowed Sometimes to Play Ball for
Their Masters Amusement-Af
fectionate Wives and Mothers.
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, says writer
in the Kansas City Star. They accept
their condition stoically, however, by the
unerring law of 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 savages passed three or foui
years, the poor squaws are to be pitied.
Living on roots and insects, which the
women must furnish, their existence as q
tribe may we'll be imagined to be very
precarious one. If the camas, a bulH
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 pinchiHg poverty and starvation. ]
have often looked with profound pity
upon troops of their old and young
squaws under the hot summer sun wan.
dering 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 large
portion of their support, haggard, broke
down, but never complaining of theiI
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 games, and
were in a maudlin state from too much
whisky but wanted to have 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 tASomen 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 goods, such as
calicoes, 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 to be the
prizes contended 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
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 game holds in each hand 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 she is playing. 1t is
remarkably comical sight to see the wo-
men roll over in the dust and dirt in the
frantic efferts to catch the string on their
sticks, while the men lie fat 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 have ever witnessed among
the Caucasian race. l will relate one
instance here which came under my own
observation, though could present hun
dreds.
During the campaign of 1669-69 l
was riding with party of men and otii-
GERS south of the Arkansas. We had
been watching some of the cavalry un
earth three or four dead warriors who
han been killed by some scouts in ter
rible fight some weeks before, and as we
rode into q small ravine in the sand hills
we came to rude lodge, inside of which,
on a rough platform or bier, fashioned of
green poles, reposed a dead warrior in
full war dress, his shield of buffalo hides,
pipe ornamented with eagle feathers and
his ''medicine bag' lying on the ground
beside him. At his head, OH her knees,
her hands clasped in the attitude of
prayer, was squaw frozen to death.
Which had first succumbed-the wound,
ed CHEF, her husband, or the devoted
wife-to the awful cold of that winter
nrairie will never be known but it shows