[209] Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1892, 427.
[210] Indian Com. Rep., 1854, p. 179.
[211] Bristol in Ind. Aff. Rep. Spec. Com., 1867, p. 357.
[212] Rep. Com. Ind. Aff., 1892, p. 607.
[213] Even the wives of chiefs were treated no better than slaves. Catlin himself tells us of the six wives of a Mandan chief who were "not allowed to speak, though they were in readiness to obey his orders." (Smithson. Rep.. 1885, Pt. II., 458.)
[214] Such cruel treatment of women argues a total lack of sympathy in Indians, and without sympathy there can be no love. The systematic manner in which sympathy is crushed among Indians I have described in a previous chapter. Here let me add a few remarks by Theodore Roosevelt (I., 86) which coincide with what John Hance, the famous Arizona guide, told me:
"Anyone who has ever been in an encampment of wild Indians and has had the misfortune to witness the delight the children take in torturing little animals will admit that the Indian's love of cruelty for cruelty's sake cannot possibly be exaggerated. The young are so trained that when old they shall find their keenest pleasure in inflicting pain in its most appalling form. Among the most brutal white borderers a man would be instantly lynched if he practiced on any creature the fiendish torture which in the Indian camp either attracts no notice at all, or else excites merely laughter."
(See also Roosevelt's remarks—87, 831, 335 on Helen Hunt Jackson's Century of Dishonor.) The Indian was much wronged by unprincipled agents and others, but the border ruffians served him only as he served others of his race, the weaker being always driven out. Nor was there any real sympathy within the tribes themselves. "These people," wrote the old Jesuit missionary Le Jeune (VI., 245), "are very little moved by compassion. They give a sick person food and drink, but show otherwise no concern for him; to coax him with love and tenderness is a language which they do not understand. When he refuses food they kill him, partly to relieve him from suffering, partly to relieve themselves of the trouble of taking him with them when they go to some other place."
[215] Smithsonian Rep., 1885, Pt. II., 108.
[216] The humor of Catlin's assertions becomes more obvious still when we read how readily Indians dissolve their marriages, through love of change, caprice, etc. See cases in Westermarck, 518.