We are passing through the reservation of the Otoe Indians, who long ago washed the war-paint from their faces, buried the tomahawk, and settled down into quiet, prosperous farmers.
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We rattle leisurely into Atchison on a Sunday evening. Lights gleam in the windows of milk-white churches, and they tell us, far better than anything else could, that we are back to civilization again.
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VERY MUCH MARRIED.
Are the Mormon women happy?
I give it up. I don't know.
Igive it up. I don't know. Apparently, the Mormon women are happy. I saw them at their best, of course—at balls, tea-parties and the like. They were like other women as far as my observation extended. They were hooped, and furbelowed, and shod, and white-collard, and bejewelled; and like women all over the world, they were softer-eyed and kinder-hearted than men can ever hope to be.
The Mormon girl is reared to believe that the plurality-wife system as it is delicately called here is strictly right; and in linking her destiny with a man who has twelve wives, she undoubtedly considers she is doing her duty. She loves the man, probably, for I think it is not true, as so many writers have stated, that girls are forced to marry whomsoever "the Church" may dictate. Some parents no doubt advise, connive, threaten, and in aggravated cases incarcerate here, as some parents have always done elsewhere, and always will do as long as petticoats continue to be an institution.