I liked very much to walk or sit among them.  With the women I held much communication by signs.  They are almost invariably coarse and ugly, with the exception of their eyes, with a peculiarly awkward gait, and forms bent by burthens.  This gait, so different from the steady and noble step of the men, marks the inferior position they occupy.  I had heard much eloquent contradiction of this.  Mrs. Schoolcraft had maintained to a friend, that they were in fact as nearly on a par with their husbands as the white woman with hers.  “Although,” said she, “on account of inevitable causes, the Indian woman is subjected to many hardships of a peculiar nature, yet her position, compared with that of the man, is higher and freer than that of the white woman.  Why will people look only on one side?  They either exalt the Red man into a Demigod or degrade him into a beast.  They say that he compels his wife to do all the drudgery, while he does nothing but hunt and amuse himself; forgetting that, upon his activity and power of endurance as a hunter, depends the support of his family; that this is labor of the most fatiguing kind, and that it is absolutely necessary that he should keep his frame unbent by burdens and unworn by toil, that he may be able to obtain the means of subsistence.  I have witnessed scenes of conjugal and parental love in the Indian’s wigwam from which I have often, often thought the educated white man, proud of his superior civilization, might learn an useful lesson.  When he returns from hunting, worn out with fatigue, having tasted nothing since dawn, his wife, if she is a good wife, will take off his moccasons and replace them with dry ones, and will prepare his game for their repast, while his children will climb upon him, and he will caress them with all the tenderness of a woman; and in the evening the Indian wigwam is the scene of the purest domestic pleasures.  The father will relate for the amusement of the wife, and for the instruction of the children, all the events of the day’s hunt, while they will treasure up every word that falls, and thus learn the theory of the art, whose practice is to be the occupation of their lives.

Mrs. Grant speaks thus of the position of woman amid the Mohawk Indians: 

“Lady Mary Montague says, that the court of Vienna was the paradise of old women, and that there is no other place in the world where a woman past fifty excites the least interest.  Had her travels extended to the interior of North America, she would have seen another instance of this inversion of the common mode of thinking.  Here a woman never was of consequence, till she had a son old enough to fight the battles of his country.  From that date she held a superior rank in society; was allowed to live at ease, and even called to consultations on national affairs.  In savage and warlike countries, the reign of beauty is very short, and its influence comparatively limited.  The girls in childhood had a very pleasing