WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER 133 



will set her into the saddle and tie her feet to the stirrups or her legs 

 to the horse so she cannot dismount to run away. Sometimes the girl 

 yells and weeps out loud. Often a girl does not know whose wife she 

 is to be. The man who carried her out of the ruka rides on her horse, 

 back of the saddle, to prevent her escape. In this manner they bring 

 her to the man's home. They guard her here for two or three nights. 

 The man's father, and maybe several other men, will sleep alongside 

 of each other across the door so that she cannot escape. In the day- 

 time the man and one of the women accompany her if she leaves the 

 ruka. I know one woman that was taken that way ; they lived near 

 here until a year ago. This woman resisted until she realized that it 

 was of no avail. She then went willingly but asked that the women in 

 the man's home would not maltreat her — women sometimes beat an 

 unwilling girl. My mother told me that three of her friends died of 

 heartache and grief because they were taken that way. One of them 

 ran back to her family but her parents forced her to return to her 

 husband. She ran away again, but hid in the woods, somewhere. Her 

 parents found her there, and again forced her to return. When they 

 heard some months later that she was dying of grief, they wanted her 

 to come to her home to die ; but she refused. She said that she would 

 now sooner die among strangers than in the home in which she had 

 been so badly treated." 



Elopements occurred when a man selected his own wife and courted 

 her secretly and, fearing interference from parents on either side, 

 arranged with the girl to meet him at night to go to his home with him. 

 Sometimes the woman told her parents beforehand; usually she did 

 not since she feared their anger. In the case of an elopement, the 

 man's father paid the girl's father for the "damage" within a month 

 or at least within a year. Quoting a 40-year-old informant: "To 

 steal a wife was a simple affair. I stole mine, but she was willing to 

 go with me. I did so because I did not have enough animals to buy 

 her. I learned to know her the same year I stole her. I met her 

 secretly and talked it over with her. A man found opportunities to 

 talk to the woman he wished to marry. It had to be done secretly, 

 never publicly, for men and women were not allowed to speak to each 

 other openly or in public. She met me near a certain tree where I 

 had tied my horse, the one I had brought for her to ride. I told her 

 to meet me there when the moon was at zenith, and she did. Then we 

 rode to my home." At this point the interpreter (non-Araucanian) 

 asked the informant why he had been so surprised then when his 

 daughter eloped with a young man recently, since he himself had 

 stolen his own wife. To which he replied: "I have told my children 



