“That may do among red men, but we pale-faces find squaws good for something else—we love them and take care of them—keep them from the cold in winter, and from the heat in summer; and try to make them as comfortable and happy as we can.”
“Dat good talk for young squaw's ears,” returned the Chippewa, a little contemptuously as to manner; though his real respect for the bee-hunter, of whose prowess he had so lately been a witness, kept him a little within bounds “but it bess not take nobody in. What Injin say to squaw, he do—what pale-face say, he no do.”
“Is that true, Bourdon?” demanded Margery, laughing at the Indian's earnestness.
“I shall be honest, and own that there may be some truth in it—for the Injin promises nothing, or next to nothing, and it is easy to square accounts, in such cases. That white men undertake more than they always perform, is quite likely to be the fact The Injin gets his advantage in this matter, by not even thinking of treating his wife as a woman should be treated.”
“How should treat woman?” put in Pigeonswing with warmth. “When warrior eat venison, gib her rest, eh? Dat no good—what you call good, den? If good hunter husband, she get 'nough—if an't good hunter, she don't get 'nough. Just so wid Injin—sometime hungry, sometime full. Dat way to live!”
“Aye, that may be your red man's ways, but it is not the manner in which we wish to treat our wives. Ask pretty Margery, here, if she would be satisfied to wait until her husband had eaten his dinner, and then come in for the scraps. No-no-Pigeonswing; we feed our women and children first and come in last, ourselves.”
“Dat good for pappoose—he little; want venison—squaw tough; use to wait. Do her good.”
Margery now laughed outright, at these specimens of Indian gallantry, which only too well embody the code of the red man's habits. Doubtless the heart has its influence among even the most savage people, for nature has not put into our breasts feelings and passions to be discarded by one's own expedients, or wants. But no advocate of the American Indian has ever yet been able to maintain that woman fills her proper place in his estimate of claims. As for Margery, though so long subject to the whims, passions and waywardness of a drunkard, she had reaped many of the advantages of having been born in that woman's paradise, New England. We are no great admirers of the legacy left by the Puritan to his descendants, taken as an inheritance in morals, manners, and customs, and as a whole; though there are parts, in the way of codicils, that there is no portion of the Christian world which might not desire to emulate. In particular, do we allude to the estimate put upon, and the treatment received by their women. Our allusion is not to the refinements and gracefulness of polished intercourse; for of THEM, the Blarney Rock of Plymouth has transmitted but a meagre account in the inventory, and perhaps the less that is said about this portion of the family property the better; but, dropping a few degrees in the social scale, and coming down to the level where we are accustomed to regard people merely as men and women, we greatly question if any other portion of the world can furnish a parallel to the manly, considerate, rational, and wisely discriminating care, that the New England husband, as the rule, bestows on his wife; the father on his daughter; or the brother on his sister. Gershom was a living, and, all things considered, a remarkable instance of these creditable traits. When sober, he was uniformly kind to Dorothy; and for Margery he would at any time risk his life. The latter, indeed, had more power over him than his own wife possessed, and it was her will and her remonstrances that most frequently led him back from the verge of that precipice over which he was so often disposed to cast himself. By some secret link she bound him closest to the family dwelling, and served most to recall the days of youth and comparative innocence, when they dwelt together beneath the paternal roof, and were equally the objects of the affection and solicitude of the same kind mother. His attachment to Dorothy was sincere, and, for one so often brutalized by drink, steady; but Dorothy could not carry him as far back, in recollections, as the one only sister who had passed the morning of life with him, in the same homely but comfortable abode.
We have no disposition to exaggerate the character of those whom it is the fashion to term the American yeomen, though why such an appellation should be applied to any in a state of society to which legal distinctions are unknown, is what we could never understand. There are no more of esquires and yeomen in this country than there are of knights and nobles, though the quiet manner in which the transition from the old to the new state of things has been made, has not rendered the public mind very sensible to the changes. But, recurring to the class, which is a positive thing and consequently ought to have a name of some sort or other, we do not belong to those that can sound its praises without some large reservations on the score of both principles and manners. Least of all, are we disposed to set up these yeomen as a privileged class, like certain of the titular statesmen of the country, and fall down and worship a calf—not a golden one by the way—of our own setting up. We can see citizens in these yeomen, but not princes, who are to be especially favored by laws made to take from others to bestow on them. But making allowances for human infirmities, the American freeholder belongs to a class that may justly hold up its head among the tillers of the earth. He improves daily, under the influence of beneficent laws, and if he don't get spoiled, of which there is some danger, in the eagerness of factions to secure his favor, and through that favor his VOTE—if he escape this danger, he will ere long make a reasonably near approach to that being, which the tongue of the flatterer would long since have persuaded him he had already more than got to be.
To one accustomed to be treated kindly, as was the case with Margery, the Chippewa's theory for the management of squaws contained much to excite her mirth, as well as her resentment, as she now made apparent by her remarks.