Of Prostitution among the North-American Indians.
Various as are the phases of civilization in different parts of the earth, no race is more peculiar than the North American Indian. It is alone. It stands apart from the rest of the human family. It resembles no other. In manners, customs, laws, ideas, and religion, the nation occupies its own ground, related by no tie with any of the innumerable tribes of the human family inhabiting the remaining divisions of the world. It has, indeed, exercised the ingenuity of ethnographical philosophers to trace among the North American Indians an identity of social institutions with the people of ancient Israel; but the comparison appears forced except in a few particulars, which seem rather matters of accident, and by no means the prominent characteristics of the Red or the Jewish race.
Until the complete establishment of a civilized society in North America, and before the settlement of peace, our knowledge of the Indian race was most imperfect. We depended on the relations of certain imaginative travellers, who wrote not so much to inform as to startle the reader—a practice not altogether abandoned at the present day. Carver, indeed, with a few others, brought home honest accounts of what he saw, but was not always careful to separate that from what he heard; and thus, even his picture is strangely coloured in some of its details. Later and more scrupulous travellers, however, have investigated the manners of the Indian race, and our acquaintance with it is gradually becoming familiar. Catlin and the various historians have added to our knowledge; so that a clear outline, at least of their social institutions, may be drawn. There are three classes of writers on the subject:—those who paint the red man as poetry incarnate; those who describe him as a vile and drunken barbarian; and those who have the sense to discriminate between the Indian of the seaport town corrupted in the dram-shop, and the Indian of the woods, displaying the original characteristics of his race. It is from such authorities we shall draw our view of the condition of women and the state of morals among them.
WOMAN OF THE SACS, OR “SÁU-KIES” TRIBE OF AMERICAN INDIANS.
[Copied, by permission, from a Portrait taken by Mr. Catlin, during his residence among the Red Indians.]
A race divided into several nations, and subdivided into innumerable tribes, might be supposed to present a similar diversity of manners. Not so, however. The social institutions of the North-American Indian are generally uniform, though of course there are many varieties of detail in their habits and customs. Yet these are neither so numerous nor so striking as to render it impossible to sketch the whole in a general view.
The Indian loves society. He is never found wandering alone. He is attached also to the company of women. Priding himself, however, on his stoicism, he never, at any period of his history, condescended to voluptuousness. His sense of manly pride prevented him from becoming immodest or indecent. This feeling at the same time inspired him with the idea that everything except the hunt and the war-path was below the dignity of man. The sentiments, therefore, which saved the female sex from becoming the mere food of lust, consigned it to an inferior position. The Indian women formed the labouring class. Such a result was inevitable. The warrior would only follow the chase or fight. There was labour to be performed. No men were to be employed for hire. Whatever, therefore, was to be done must be done by the females. The wife is, consequently, her husband’s slave. She plants the maize, tobacco, beans, and running vines; she drives the blackbird from the corn, prepares the store of wild fruits for winter, tears up the weeds, gathers the harvest, pounds the grain, dries the buffalo meat, brings home the game, carries wood, draws water, spreads the repast, attends on her husband, aids in canoe building, and bears the poles of the wigwam from place to place. Among the trading communities she is especially valuable,—joining in the hunt, preparing the skins and fur, and filling the wigwam with the riches of the prairie, which the men exchange for the means of a luxurious life. When the hunter kills game he leaves it under a tree, perhaps many miles from the “smokes” of his tribe, returns home, and sends his wife to fetch it. Making garments of skins, sewing them with sinews and thorns; weaving mats and baskets; embroidering with shells, feathers, and grass; preparing drugs and administering medicine; and building huts—are among the other offices of the sex. To educate them for this life of industry, the girls are trained by the severe discipline of toils; taught to undergo fatigue, to be obedient, and to suffer without complaining.
Considered as the slaves of the men, it is natural to find a plurality of wives allowed by the Indian social law; accordingly from Florida to the St. Lawrence polygamy is permitted, though some tribes further north have not adopted the practice. Elsewhere also, in other directions, more than one woman is taken into the chief’s wigwam. They are his servants, and he counts them as we count our horses and cattle; some of the great Mandan warriors have seven or eight; indeed, among all the communities which Catlin had an opportunity of visiting, polygamy was allowed, and it was no uncommon thing for him to find six, eight, ten, twelve, or even fourteen wives in the same lodge. The practice is of an antiquity too remote to fix, and is considered not only as necessary, but as honourable and just; they are servants, and a man’s wealth is partly measured by this standard. This is one of the man’s inducements to follow the custom, though it cannot be denied that some of these stoic warriors delight in a harem from the same motives as the Turk or the Hindu. It is allowed, we say, to all, but is principally confined to the great chiefs and medicine men, the others being too humble or too poor to obtain girls from their fathers: there are, indeed, few instances in which an ordinary man has more than one squaw, and it might be supposed that his wigwam was most peaceful; but it is not so. The jealousy of the Indian women is not of the same kind as with Europeans; it is watchful of strangers, not of regular wives, and six or seven of these dwell in great harmony under the same roof. So well established is this usage among them, that civilization meets more resistance in attempting to break it down, than in any other of its efforts; indeed, in overthrowing polygamy among the North-American Indians, or the remnant which is left of them, we shall overthrow their whole social economy and change their national character, and this it will be long before we are able to do. Probably the custom will continue as long as the race exists, and be only extinguished with it. Instances, indeed, have occurred, in which an Indian has sworn obedience to our social law, but many examples also are known of a return to the old habit. Sir George Simpson relates an anecdote of one who came into the settled parts, learned to read and write, adopted the principle of monogamy, and, returning among his countrymen, sought to persuade them to follow the same practice, and acquire the same accomplishments. They held long arguments with him upon the subject, debated gravely, and, in the end, instead of being converted by him, won him back to their ancient institution. He took a great number of wives, forswore books, and alluded no more to his designs of social reform. Some shame, however, possessed his mind, so that, when some Europeans were in the village, he kept in his wigwam and would not see them.
A chief named Five Crows, of the Cayux tribe, offered also to renounce polygamy, but it was from impulse only, and not from the discovery of any social principle. He had five wives, and great wealth in horses, cattle, and slaves. Falling in love, however, with a young Christian girl, the daughter of a gentleman in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company, he dismissed his old companions, and with great parade and confidence presented himself, made the proposal, but, to his infinite astonishment as well as mortification, was rejected; in a transport of spite, he immediately married one of his own slave girls. Generally, however, the American Indians are far less susceptible of the sentiment of love, still less of sensuality, than natives of Asiatic blood, and women among them are usually viewed with indifference; instances of the contrary occur and will be alluded to.
Whether polygamists or otherwise, the American Indians universally recognise the marriage contract. There is no such thing among them as a tribe practising promiscuous intercourse; the reports of such are idle tales. Such a community would become extinct, in the inevitable course of nature. The circumstances of the contract vary, however, in different parts, and among different societies. In fertile districts polygamy is more common; in barren tracts most of the men of all classes have only one wife. In some communities the man takes his squaw for life, and only divorces her for a recognised cause; in others, no more than a temporary union is expected. Everywhere, however, the condition of the sex is humiliating, if not miserable, and marriage is no more than the conjunction of a master with his servant. Thus the noblest institution of society is perverted into a form of slavery. That polygamy is practised cannot, nevertheless, be lamented in a social view. The frequency of wars among the American Indians, in their original state, caused a disproportion of the sexes, which allowed many of the men to take several wives, without preventing all from having one. Had this custom not been prevalent, one alternative only would have remained to the superfluous women—they would have become common prostitutes.
The conditions and forms of the marriage contract are various only in the inferior details—the general tenour of them being that a man procures a woman from her father as a purchase, and acquires in her a property over which he has the control of a master. Some restrictions, however, are laid upon the intercourse of the sexes. Marriage cannot be contracted among any of the tribes which originally dwelt east of the Mississippi, or indeed anywhere between kindred of a certain degree. The Iroquois warrior may choose a partner from the same tribe, but not the same cabin, or group of wigwams. For it is to be recollected that, among the tribes, especially of the Algonquin race, the whole family, or clan of several families, dwell together, bearing a common designation. One of that nation must look for a wife beyond those who bear the same token or family symbol. The Cherokee would marry at once a mother and her daughter, but never a woman of his own immediate kindred. The Indians of the Red River frequently take two or more sisters to wife at once.
The manners of the Algonquin race are generally similar. The young man desiring a wife offers a gift—or, if he be poor, his friends do it for him—to the girl’s father. If this be accepted, the marriage is complete. He goes to dwell in the woman’s house for a year, surrendering the gains of one hunting season to her family, and then taking her away to a wigwam of his own.
The contract is, with all the other tribes, usually made with the girl’s father; she is virtually bought and sold. In many cases she is never consulted at all, and the whole is a mere mercenary transaction. Instances do occur, also, where the parties approach each other, express mutual affection, make arrangements, and swear vows, sacred and inviolable as vows can be; but the marriage is never consummated without payment to the bride’s father. In the interior of Oregon the permission of the chief is first asked, then the approval of the parents, then the assent of the girl; but if she object, her decision is conclusive. If she consent, the man gives from one to five horses to her father; they have a feast, and the ceremony is complete. Espousals often take place during infancy, but neither is absolutely bound by this engagement. The influence of the parents is, however, so powerful, that their will is seldom or never resisted; so that a bargain is often concluded, and a price paid; while the girl is a child. Occasionally the female courts the male—that is, proposes to become his squaw, and promises to be faithful, good-tempered, and obedient, if he will take her to his hut. He seldom refuses, for polygamy is permitted, and a husband may in this region put away his wife when he pleases. He usually allows each to have a separate fire.
The missionaries in Oregon have had some success, and have displayed more prudence than some of their brethren of the same profession in the island of Tahiti. Men who had a plurality of wives were required, on their conversion, to maintain them; while those who had only one were forbidden to take more.
On the Red River, when a young man desires a girl as wife, he addresses her father, and, if accepted by him, dwells in his wigwam for a year—as among the Algonquins—and then takes her home. This is only observed with the first; he adds to the number, if he is wealthy, as fast as he can. Few of the women are thus left single, and scarcely any common prostitutes are found. Some will occasionally bear children before marriage; and the zeal of the missionary West was displayed in somewhat of a fanatical spirit by his refusing to baptize a child not born in formal wedlock. We may, however, forgive this eccentric spirit for the motive which created it; and must admit that, as Sir George Simpson bears witness, the Indians of Oregon are vastly reformed, and chiefly by missionary influence.
Among the curious customs preceding marriage in other parts of North America, is that of the lover going at midnight into the tent of the woman he desires, and, lighting a splinter of wood, holding it to her face. If she wake and leave the torch burning, it is a sign for him to be gone; if she blow it, he is accepted, and we are told that this frequently leads to immoral intercourse. Catlin knew a young chief of the Mandans on the Upper Missouri, who took four wives in one day, paying for each a horse or two. They were from twelve to fifteen years old, and sat happily in his wigwam, perfectly contented to dwell under his commands. He was applauded for the act. This extreme youth in the bride is common among the tribes; children pass from infancy to womanhood by a single bound—we are assured, on good testimony, that mothers twelve years of age are not unfrequent. The youths are led by precept and example to adopt marriage; celibacy beyond the age of puberty being very rare, especially in those communities which have come into familiar contact with Europeans. It appears indeed that this plan is resorted to by the men to secure virgins as their wives, for among few barbarous nations is the chastity of unmarried woman safe very long after she has reached a marriageable age. To have no husband is esteemed by the females a misfortune and a disgrace, while to have no wife entails great discomfort on a man.
It has already been shown that, when married, the woman becomes her husband’s servitor; that she is, in many cases, the humiliated drudge, in all, the humble attendant on her master; that she waits on him in submissive silence while he eats, and approaches him with the deference due from an inferior to a superior being. Those who infer, however, from these circumstances that the sentiments of conjugal, filial, and parental affection are unknown to the Indian race, think erroneously of them. Strong and tender attachments continually spring up between the sexes. The lover sings of the girl he has chosen, and takes her home with the delight of gratified affection. The husband, too, when he devolves upon his wife all the labours of the wigwam, is no more conscious that he is using her harshly than she is that she occupies an unnatural position. Ideas and sentiments are often no more than things of habit, and with the Indian chief strong love is not inconsistent with his walking in lordly indolence along the forest path while she is bearing the heavy wigwam poles behind. Heckewelder relates a singular instance of indulgence, which, it must be confessed, is rare among the barbarians of North America. There was a scarcity in the district inhabited by a certain tribe, and an Indian woman, being sick, expressed a strong desire for a mess of Indian corn. Her husband having been told that a trader at Lower Sandarsky had a little, set off on horseback for that place, a hundred miles distant, gave his steed in exchange for a hatful of grain, returned home on foot, and gratified his wife by the treat he had thus procured. It is seldom that the most polished society presents a similar instance of kindliness. Many pictures of domestic happiness are exhibited among the Indians. The Blackfeet, Sanee, and Blood Indians, reckon it among their chief desires that their wives may live long and look young. Smoke sometimes rises for forty years from the same hearth, with one couple presiding over it. On the other hand, the husband’s infidelity or harshness sometimes drives his wife to suicide, for the woman has no protector. The life of hardship they lead soon strips them of all their personal beauty, when they are entirely consigned to toil. In spite of this, they are well fed, healthy, and robust, unlike the women of Australia who are stinted in food, and often deformed or crippled by the severity of their labour. Nature has been very indulgent to them. Scarcely any have more than five, and few more than three children. Easy travail takes away one affliction from their lot. The pains of delivery are seldom prolonged for more than a quarter of an hour, and she who groans under the acutest pang is prophesied, with a taunt, to be the mother of cowards. Death, however, occasionally ensues. The Indian mother loves her children dearly, never trusting it to a hireling nurse—which indeed could not be found; for no woman would put away her own infant to suckle another’s. Bearing the cradle on her back she performs her daily task, and if she die the nursling is laid in her grave. One curious and beautiful custom is that of carrying the cradle of a dead nursling child for a whole year, and all are familiar with the story of the Canadian mother bedewing the grave of her child with milk from her bosom. Infanticide is a rare and secret crime, not by any means to be enumerated among the characteristics of their manners.
Marriage among the North-American Indians is contracted for the happiness and comfort of the man. He is bound to live with his wife only so long as these are enjoyed. Adultery, indolence, intemperance, and sterility are among the causes of divorce. It takes place without formality by simple separation or desertion; and where there are no children is very easy. Their offspring forms their most powerful bond; for, where the mother is discarded, the unwritten law of the red man allows her to keep the children whom she has borne or nursed. The husband detecting his wife in adultery may cut off her nose, or take off part of her scalp. He sometimes kills her with her paramour at once; and the only blame attached to him on the occasion is, descending from his dignity to feel so strongly the loss of one woman, when another may easily be procured to supply her place.
The idea of chastity as a positive virtue is but feebly developed among them. With the men, indeed, it is a Spartan quality, as opposed to effeminacy; otherwise, the promiscuous sleeping of whole families in the same chamber, with various other circumstances, would tend much to immorality. Nevertheless, among some tribes, as that of the Mandans, the women are delicate and modest; and in the wigwams of the respectable families virtue is as cherished, and as unapproachable, as anywhere in the world. Generally the Indians are decent, and, with the exception of those customs which form the basis of their manners, and result directly from their national character, might be won over without difficulty to the amenities of civilized life. Many of the squaws, of course, in North America, as elsewhere, are immodest, and seek occasion to engage in an intrigue. With the unmarried girls the same is the case. A bastard child may be born without entailing great shame upon its mother, though the seducer is greatly despised; but such an occurrence is rare, not altogether, however, because the females are too chaste, but because they are too cautious, and employ means to procure abortion. This practice is sometimes resorted to by the squaws, though discountenanced by the men, except when they are on the march, or hotly pressed by an enemy.
From a notice of their punishments in Hunter’s narrative of his captivity, it would appear that the last act of depravity is not unknown among the Indians. Adultery, he tells us, where not perpetrated by the husband’s consent, is punishable with divorce. We might doubt the testimony of this writer, but that Wilkes found Indians in the far north, within the range of the Hudson’s Bay territories, who would gamble away their wives, and prostitute them for money. These men he believed to be degraded from their original condition, but various authors speak of a similar practice. Carver relates that, among the Manedowessis, it was a custom when a young woman could not get a husband, for her to assemble all the chief warriors of the tribe in a spacious wigwam, to give them a feast, and then, retiring behind a screen, to prostitute herself to each in succession. This gained her great applause, and always insured her a husband. It was, however, nearly obsolete when he wrote, and appears now to be altogether extinct.
Many of the Europeans dwelling on the Red River were accustomed to take concubines during the period of their residence there. The Indians, who are civilized, as it is called, in the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada, have thus learned also the worst vices of Europe. Maclean, a very recent writer, declares that the Christianized tribes in the Hudson’s Bay territories have been deteriorated by intercourse with the whites, become drunken, sensual, and depraved. The venereal disease commits frightful ravages among them. Most of their diseases arise from excess of one kind or another. He says that the men employed by the Company are chiefly reconciled to their hard employment and poor remuneration by the immorality of the women, of whom large numbers follow the occupation of prostitutes, and sell themselves for the vilest price. On the north-west coast, chastity is scarcely even a name; indeed, there is no word in the language of the people to express that idea. The sea tribes are, indeed, in all cases, the most licentious; which appears to justify the remark, that intercourse with a strange unsettled population has demoralized them.
At some parts of the coast where the trading ships touch for supplies, hundreds of women come down, and, by an indecent display of their persons, endeavour to obtain permission to go on board. When Sir George Simpson arrived at one of these ports a man asked for the captain’s wife, and offered his own in exchange. In that part of the country the tyranny over the female sex is even more severe than in the interior. When a man takes a wife, he purchases her as his perpetual property; and if they separate, whether from an offence of hers or his, she must never marry again. She usually takes to clandestine prostitution as a means of living. But such instances as the foregoing are not confined to the coast. In the interior the traveller may observe, wherever a large concourse of Indians is assembled, a number of beautiful and voluptuous-looking women continually mixing in the throng, and throwing their glances upon strangers, or the single young men of the tribe. The Indians have now been removed to a territory beyond the Mississippi; and it is probable their corruption will rapidly increase in proportion to their congregation.
One peculiar feature of the system, introduced of course since Europeans visited the country, remains to be noticed. Many of the white traders, among the tribes of the Upper Missouri, find it good policy to connect themselves by marriage with powerful families, and they procure then the most beautiful girls of the noblest tribes, who aspire with delight to such a station, which usually elevates them above their servile occupations to a life of indolence, ease, and pleasure. These engagements, however, are scarcely marriages—at least in the European sense of the term—ceremonies of any kind being seldom performed. A large price in Indian estimation is paid for the girl, and she is transferred at once to the trader’s house; with equal facility he may annul the contract, leaving his companion to be candidate for another mate, for which her father is not sorry, as he may procure an additional horse again in exchange for her: this is no more than a system of virtual prostitution, in which the woman is hired out as a temporary companion, merely for the pecuniary gain. The trader may procure the handsomest girl in the tribe for two horses; for a gun with a supply of powder and ball; for five or six pounds of beads; for a couple of gallons of whiskey; or a handful of awls. Such is the price at which the Indian chief will prostitute his daughter. Occasionally, it must be added, the couple thus united live together permanently as man and wife, the possibility of which is, indeed, almost always supposed.
The Indians of New Caledonia, though not belonging to the same stock with the red race of North America, may be noticed here: they are extremely profligate; the venereal disease is common among them; and the blessing of a healthy climate is rendered nugatory by the intemperance of the people. Among them, nevertheless, women are held in more estimation than among the red tribes, for the men are not possessed by that sense of lordly dignity which disdains at once to become sensual, and to share the labours of the inferior sex. Women assist in the councils, and those of high rank are even admitted to the feasts. During the fishing season each sex is equally employed, and so in all their other tasks. Lewdness could not be carried to greater excess than it is among them: both men and women are addicted to the vilest crimes; they abandon themselves in youth to the indulgence of their most unbridled lust, and the country owes its rapid decrease of population to the universal depravity of the people. No man marries until his animal appetite is satiated upon the voluntary prostitutes who abound, and then his wife, if dissatisfied with the restraints of matrimony, may refuse to dwell with him; the union is consequently broken by mutual consent, for a certain time or for ever. Meanwhile they addict themselves to their former pleasures, but the woman is nominally prohibited, by law, under pain of death, from cohabiting with any man during this period of separation from her husband; he seldom cares, however, to enforce his right, and she seldom fails to break the law. Polygamy is allowed, but only one woman is actually a wife—the rest are mere concubines; the chief one may be supplanted by a new favourite, when the old one yields without a murmur, though occasionally a woman of violent passions will destroy herself.
To illustrate the general subject of the condition of women among the North-American Indians, we may notice an incident described by the observant traveller Catlin. When, among the Sioux, he proposed to paint the portrait of a woman, his condescension was regarded by the warriors of the community first as incredible and then as ridiculous. It appeared marvellous that he should think of conferring on the females the same honour he had conferred on the medicine men and braves; those whom he selected were laughed at by hundreds of others who were, nevertheless, jealous of the distinction. The men who had been painted said that if the artist was going to paint women and children the sooner he destroyed their portraits the better; the women had never taken scalps, never done anything but make fires and dress, with other occupations equally servile: at length, he explained that the portraits of the men were wanted to show the chiefs of the white nation who were great and worthy among the Sioux nation, while the women were only wanted to show how they looked and how they dressed: by this means he attained his object. Mr. Catlin considers that, on the whole, the Old World has no superior morality or virtue to hold up as an example to the American Indian races. The degradation of the women, however, is denied by none, though a woman of superior courage or contrivance sometimes places herself above the degrading laws which depress the rest of her sex. Thus one whom Catlin saw joined boldly in a dance—though females are only allowed to join in a few of these—played off great feats before the warriors, and for her audacity no less than for her skill was greeted with thundering peals of applause, besides a pile of gifts[62].