One day, as I was seated on one of the canoes, a woman came and sat beside me, with her baby in its cradle set up at her feet.  She asked me by a gesture, to let her take my sun-shade, and then to show her how to open it.  Then she put it into her baby’s hand, and held it over its head, looking at me the while with a sweet, mischievous laugh, as much as to say, “you carry a thing that is only fit for a baby;” her pantomime was very pretty.  She, like the other women, had a glance, and shy, sweet expression in the eye; the men have a steady gaze.

That noblest and loveliest of modern Preux, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who came through Buffalo to Detroit and Mackinaw, with Brant, and was adopted into the Bear tribe by the name of Eghnidal, was struck, in the same way, by the delicacy of manners in the women.  He says, “Notwithstanding the life they lead, which would make most women rough and masculine, they are as soft, meek and modest, as the best brought up girls in England.  Somewhat coquettish too!  Imagine the manners of Mimi in a poor squaw, that has been carrying packs in the woods all her life.”

McKenney mentions that the young wife, during the short bloom of her beauty, is an object of homage and tenderness to her husband.  One Indian woman, the Flying Pigeon, a beautiful, an excellent woman, of whom he gives some particulars, is an instance of the power uncommon characters will always exert of breaking down the barriers custom has erected round them.  She captivated by her charms, and inspired with reverence for her character, her husband and son.  The simple praise with which the husband indicates the religion, the judgment, and the generosity he saw in her, are as satisfying as Count Zinzendorf’s more labored eulogium on his “noble consort.”  The conduct of her son, when, many years after her death, he saw her picture at Washington, is unspeakably affecting.  Catlin gives anecdotes of the grief of a chief for the loss of a daughter, and the princely gifts he offers in exchange for her portrait, worthy not merely of European, but of Troubadour sentiment.  It is also evident that, as Mrs. Schoolcraft says, the women have great power at home.  It can never be otherwise, men being dependent upon them for the comfort of their lives.  Just, so among ourselves, wives who are neither esteemed nor loved by their husbands, have great power over their conduct by the friction of every day, and over the formation of their opinions by the daily opportunities so close a relation affords, of perverting testimony and instilling doubts.  But these sentiments should not come in brief flashes, but burn as a steady flame, then there would be more women worthy to inspire them.  This power is good for nothing, unless the woman be wise to use it aright.  Has the Indian, has the white woman, as noble a feeling of life and its uses, as religious a self-respect, as worthy a field of thought and action, as man?  If not, the white woman, the Indian woman, occupies an inferior position to that of man.  It is not so much a question of power, as of privilege.