consent.  A reference to the original passage gives, however, a different impression, showing that the parents always have their own way, unless the girl elopes.  The suitor’s mother arranges the matter with the parents of the girl he wants, and when the terms have been agreed upon her property is removed to his lodge.  “The disappearance of the property is the first intimation which she receives of the contemplated change in her condition.”  If one or both are unwilling, “the parents, who have a great influence, generally succeed in bringing them to second their views.”

COMPULSORY “FREE CHOICE”

A story related by C.G.  Murr, a German missionary, warns us that assertions as to the girls being consulted must always be accepted with great caution.  His remarks relate to several countries of Spanish America.  He was often urged to find husbands for girls only thirteen years old, by their mothers, who were tired of watching them.  “Much against my will,” he writes,

“I married such young girls to Indians fifty or sixty years old.  At first I was deceived, because the girls said it was their free choice, whereas, in truth, they had been persuaded by their parents with flatteries or threats.  Afterwards I always asked the girls, and they confessed that their father and mother had threatened to beat them if they disobeyed.”

In tribes where some freedom seems to be allowed the girls at present there are stories or traditions indicating that such a departure from the natural state of affairs is resented by the men.  Sometimes, writes Dorsey (260) of the Omahas,

“when a youth sees a girl whom he loves, if she be willing, he says to her, ’I will stand in that place.  Please go thither at night.’  Then after her arrival he enjoys her, and subsequently asks her of her father in marriage.  But it was different with a girl who had been petulant, one who had refused to listen to the suitor at first.  He might be inclined to take his revenge.  After lying with her, he might say, ’As you struck me and hurt me, I will not marry you.  Though you think much of yourself, I despise you.’  Then would she be sent away without winning him for her husband; and it was customary for the man to make songs about her.  In these songs the woman’s name was not mentioned unless she had been a ‘minckeda,’ or dissolute woman."[224]

A BRITISH COLUMBIA STORY

An odd story about a man who was so ugly that no girl would have him is related by Boas.[225] This man was so distasteful to the girls that if he accidentally touched the blanket of one of them she cut out the piece he had touched.  Ten times this had happened, and each time he had gathered the piece that had been cut out, giving it to his mother to save.  Besides being so ugly, he was also very poor, having gambled away everything he possessed, and being reduced to