The South American tribes were more docile, indolent, and soft-hearted than those of the north. They married at an earlier period; twelve or thirteen being the common age for a bride. It is said that the tribes about the isthmus of Darien considered it no impropriety for women to make the first declaration of love. When they preferred a young man, they told him so, and promised to be very faithful, good-tempered, and obedient, if he would take them to wife.
The women of Greenland and other countries about the arctic regions are inured to the utmost rigor of a northern climate, and the extremity of toil. During the long winters, many of these tribes live in snow huts with ice windows. They consider train-oil one of the greatest of luxuries, and would eagerly devour a tallow candle in preference to the most delicious sweetmeats. They dress in garments of reindeer’s skin, lined with moss, and changed so seldom, that they become filthy in the extreme. The men hunt bears and catch seals; but when they have towed their booty to land, they would consider it a disgrace to help the women drag it home, or skin and dress it. They often stand and look idly on, while their wives are staggering beneath a load that almost bends them to the earth. The women are cooks, butchers, masons, curriers, shoemakers, and tailors. They will manage a boat in the roughest seas, and will often push off from the shore in the midst of a storm, that would make the hardiest European sailor tremble.
In most countries, women enter into matrimony more readily than men, even where their affections are not concerned. The reasons are obvious. Women are more restrained by the laws and usages of society than men, and the scope of their ambition is much more limited. Though marriage subjects them to many cares and privations, it gives them in some respects a greater degree of freedom and consideration; it likewise generally insures protection and support, and is almost the only way in which a woman can rise above her natural condition, with regard to wealth and rank.
In Greenland, all this is reversed. Young girls have nothing to do but dance and sing, and fetch water, and look to their baby brothers and sisters; but when they marry, they become the slaves of an absolute master, for whom they are obliged to toil and drudge, with frequent beatings; and if left in widowhood with little children, they are generally in extreme poverty, with none to hunt or fish for them. For these reasons, the Greenland women are averse to marriage. When a girl sees the relations of a young man at her father’s house, and hears them praise his dexterity in catching seals, she begins to suspect that her parents are about to sell her; and she often runs away and hides in the mountains, until the women search for her, and drag her home. On such occasions, she will remain silent and dejected for several days, refusing to be comforted. Sometimes they make a solemn vow that they will never marry, and shave their heads in sign of their determination. Their hair is long, straight and black. The women wear it in a roll on the top of the head, adorned with some gay bandage of beads, or hanging in two long braids each side of the forehead. It is never cut off, except to avoid marriage, or in token of deep mourning, or as a punishment. Mothers tattoo the faces of their daughters, by drawing threads filled with soot under the skin. They are generally short in stature, with shoulders made very broad by the constant habit of carrying burdens. Their complexion is tawny, and their eyes small and sunken. Some of the old women are said to be hideously ugly; their eyes being inflamed by the glittering of the sun on fields of ice, and their teeth blackened by the constant use of tobacco. Some of the inhabitants of these northern regions have their garments made wide enough in the back to support an infant, which is kept from falling by means of a girdle round the mother’s waist; in other places, the babe sits behind her neck, on a broad strap fastened round her forehead. Some of the children, it is said, are rather comely by nature, but, from being laid carelessly in the bottom of boats, they look very much like wild, neglected little animals.
Polygamy is not common, but is by no means discreditable. The first wife, if she have children, is considered the head of the family. When she dies, the junior wife takes her place, and is generally very kind to the motherless little ones. When a man wishes to obtain a wife, he adorns himself, his children, his house, his boats, and his darts, in the finest manner he can, in order to render himself an object of attraction. Widowers seldom marry under a year, unless they have very small children, with no one to nurse them. When a man wishes for divorce, he leaves the house, apparently in anger, and does not return for several days; the wife understands his meaning, packs up her clothes, and removes to her friends.
In these northern regions the dances are pantomimes, consisting of violent writhings, stampings, and contortions. They are particularly fond of imitating the animals they are accustomed to pursue. The bear has been called their dancing-master, for they imitate, with wonderful accuracy, his motions and attitudes, in all possible situations. Their skilful female dancers are so rapid and violent in their movements, that they appear to a civilized eye more like furies or maniacs than any thing else.
The Greenlanders and Esquimaux are generally good-humored and friendly, and, like all savages, extremely hospitable. Men, women, and children, who are obliged to live huddled together in small apartments, cannot be expected to have any considerable degree of refinement, or even decency, in their habits; but their perilous mode of life tends to develope a kind of instinctive intelligence. Captain Lyon mentions one female, in particular, named Iligliuk, whom her countrymen called “the wise woman.” She was frequently on board his ship, and gave some valuable geographical knowledge of the country, in the form of a rude map; but she soon became very proud and disdainful, in consequence of the attentions that were paid her.
The tribes of these frozen regions have generally great faith in magic, and place much reliance on information obtained from male and female sorcerers, who go about dressed in a fantastic manner, and assuming a frenzied deportment, as if under the influence of evil inspiration.
Intoxication is a common vice with both sexes; and both have an excessive love of chewing and smoking tobacco.
In the Russian settlements, there is a tribe which have a strange manner of courtship. When a young man has chosen a girl, he goes to her relations, and offers “to drudge for them,” till he can secure the object of his affections. The young woman is immediately wrapped up in a multiplicity of garments, that scarcely leave her face visible; and the lover has no hope of obtaining his prize, until in some lucky moment he catches her off her guard, and is able to touch her uncovered hand, arm, neck, or face. It is necessary that she should confess the fact, and affirm that she was taken by surprise. It is difficult to perform this task; for her female relations keep near her night and day, and if the young man attempts to tear off the teasing envelopes, he gets a sound beating, and is liable to be dismissed in disgrace. Sometimes two or three years expire before he attains his object; and in the mean time, he is bound to perform, with the utmost industry and submission, any labors her relations choose to impose upon him. Soon after the long-desired triumph is obtained, the damsel consents to be his wife, and her friends, without any further ceremony, commemorate the event by a feast.