“Of the state of female society among the Northern Indians I shall say little, because on a review of it I find very little to admire, either in their collective morality, or personal endowments....  Doomed to drudgery and hardships from infancy ... without either mental resources or personal beauty—­what can be said in favor of the Indian women?”

A French author, Eugene A. Vail, writes an interesting summary (207-14) of the realistic descriptions given by older writers of the brutal treatment to which the women of the Northern Indians were subjected.  He refers, among other things, to the efforts made by Governor Cass, of Michigan, to induce the Indians to treat their women more humanely; but all persuasion was in vain, and the governor finally had to resort to punishment.  He also refers to the selfish ingenuity with which the men succeeded in persuading the foolish squaws that it would be a disgrace for their lords and masters to do any work, and that polygamy was a desirable thing.  The men took as many wives as they pleased, and if one of them remonstrated against a new rival, she received a sound thrashing.

In Franklin’s Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea we are informed (160) that the women are obliged to drag the heavily laden sledges: 

“Nothing can more shock the feelings of a person accustomed to civilized life than to witness the state of their degradation.  When a party is on a march the women have to drag the tent, the meat, and whatever the hunter possesses, whilst he only carries his gun and medicine case.”

When the men have killed any large beast, says Hearne (90), the women are always sent to carry it to the tent.  They have to prepare and cook it,

“and when it is done the wives and daughters of the greatest captains in the country are never served till all the males, even those who are in the capacity of servants, have eaten what they think proper.”

Of the Chippewas, Keating says (II., 153), that “frequently ... their brutal conduct to their wives produces abortions.”

A friend of the Blackfoot Indians, G.B.  Grinnell, relates (184, 216) that, while boys play and do as they please, a girl’s duties begin at an early age, and she soon does all a woman’s “and so menial” work.  Their fathers select husbands for them and, if they disobey, have a right to beat or even kill them.  “As a consequence of this severity, suicide was quite common among the Blackfoot girls.”

A passage in William Wood’s New England Prospect, published in 1634,[217] throws light on the aboriginal condition of Indian women in that region.  Wood refers to “the customarie churlishnesse and salvage inhumanitie” of the men.  The Indian women, he says, are