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CHAPTER XVIII.

BUCKS AND SQUAWS.

MORE than the White women gain, their Red sisters lose by this unnatural disparity of the male and female sexes. In the Indian lodges, there are more females than males, and in these lodges the females are bought and sold like cows and slaves.

Rounding Cape Horn and passing the summit near Truckee, three or four miles from Donner Lake, the scene of a wild winter legend, we dip into the valley of Humboldt River, a valley rising higher than the top of Snowdon; and are now among the savage mountain tribes-Utes and Shoshones-horse Indians, they are called, in contrast with the tamer savages of the Pacific Slope.

At Winnemucca, called after a stout Pah-Ute war chief, we observe an Indian of another branch of the Ute family, wrapped in a thick blanket, lean

ing on a brand, and guarding two crouching squaws. The air is sharp, the time being mid-winter, and the plateau higher than Ben Nevis; yet the two young women crouching on the ground are clothed in nothing but cotton rags.

'Pai-Ute?' I ask, having lately met some members of his tribe in Salt Lake City, where the new developments of doctrine are seducing many of his people into joining the church of Latter Day Saints.

'Pai-Ute,' he says.

'Your name?'

'Red Dog.'

'Smoke a cigar?

Red Dog unslips a corner of his blanket, draws the wool about his throat, and lights the Indian weed; a luxury more tempting to his savage tastes than anything on earth except a drink of fire-water. His squaws look up and smile, though with a shrinking air; an elder and a younger woman; each with fat broad face and dark Mongolian eyes; one eighteen or nineteen, the other hardly fifteen, years

of

age.

'Your squaws?' we ask, the man, through one of the scouts, who hang about these Indian trails.

'Yes, mine. Old squaw, young squaw-big

one, old squaw;

little one, young squaw.'

• Are they both your wives?'

'Yes, both; this is old wife, that is

young wife

two squaws-me!' and the Red rascal grins with a triumphant air, through all his daubs of paint.

6

6

Are you a Mormon, eh?'

Plenty of Pai-Utes are Mormon chiefs; PaiUtes very fond of Enoch,' says Red Dog, evading a direct reply to my enquiry.

Encouraged by the sound of friendly voices, the younger wife, a pretty Indian girl, peeps through her lashes, while the elder wife stares boldly up into your face, and begs. Both women have a strange resemblance to the nomads seen about a Tartar steppe; just as their sisters on Tule River bear a strange resemblance to the Chinese females in San Francisco. But these savage damsels bring their owner a lower price than their sisters from Hong Kong. Two hundred dollars are supposed to be the value of a comely Chinese girl. This Pai-Ute bought his squaw for twenty dollars. Her friends, it secms, were out of luck; the snow is getting deep; elk and antelope are scarce; and they have sold her to a

stranger, as they might have sold him a pony or a dog. The money paid for her will be spent in drink. By law, no whisky can be sold to Indians; but up in these snow-deserts, where is the magistrate to enforce the law?

'

'Are you taking her home to your own country?' Ugh!' he hisses through his teeth, the Pai-Utest of our family have no country left.

have taken all our lands and springs.

The Whites

Some Pai

Utes have lands; not many. One day the Great Father will give us back our lands.'

'How do you live?'

'We wait and go about; kill game—not much; sow seed-not much. Pai-Utes very poor. One more cigar?'

If

Tell me, Red Dog, about your two squaws. you are very poor, why have you bought another wife?'

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To work for me. No squaw, much work; plenty squaw, no work. I get more dollar, buy

more squaw.'

'You make them work for you?'

The rascal grins, and clutches at his brand. Poor creatures, he will make them grind and toil;

perhaps lend them out as road-menders, possibly drive them to the Humboldt River camps. Among the Mission Indians, who are broken more or less to gentle ways, a buck may beat his squaw, in passion, but he seldom forces her to work. His women, as a rule, are willing slaves, eager to sweat for their ungrateful lord; but if they leave the roots undug, the patch of corn unsown, he only laughs and yawns. He would have done the same, and therefore thinks the negligence a venial sin. An Indian of these mountains snarls at such a buck with scorn, saying, he is not brave enough to thrash his squaws!'

Compared with Apaches, Kickapoos, and Kiowas, the Utes are but a sorry lot-root diggers, rat catchers; yet the sorriest Ute alive-a dog not brave enough to scalp a sleeping foe, or to avenge a blood feud-is brave enough to kick and club a girl. Yet he prefers to set his women at each other, trusting that their jealousies will make them tear and scratch enough to save him trouble in his lodge. Why have you brought the old squaw with

you?' we enquire of the Pai-Ute bridegroom.

Ugh!' he grunts, to break the little one. All