134 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 33 



that they should not follow my example in things that I have done 

 badly; that now I am giving them a good example and that they 

 should follow it." He added with emphasis : "I still maintain it was a 

 disgraceful thing for my daughter to run away the way she did ! I 

 sent her to school for four years, yes, longer than that. The longer 

 children attend school the worse they are!" 



Occasionally a woman was — and still is — forced into marriage en- 

 tirely against her will. Old women who had lived forced marriages 

 spoke of them with visible emotions of bitterness toward parents, and 

 often toward the husband. None would relate her experience. A 

 non-Araucanian interpreter later related the following which she 

 said was not unlike situations described to her on occasions by old 

 women: "Seven years ago (1940) an 18-year-old girl ran into our 

 house, breathless, about 7 o'clock one morning, saying she had run 

 away from home, that a young man had just been at their house and 

 that she was going to be sold to him ; that he was to return one of the 

 following days to get her. She begged to stay with us for protection. 

 We gave her breakfast, and tried to calm and comfort her. She was 

 not here an hour when her mother and younger sister were rapping at 

 the door. The mother asked if her older daughter was with us, and 

 if so, she wished to speak with her. The daughter said that she was 

 filled with fear and did not wish to speak with her mother. But the 

 mother would not relent. So we told the girl that we would stay with 

 her while she talked to her mother, which we did. The mother was 

 very angry. She scolded the girl in the Mapuche language for running 

 away, and raised her hand to strike her. She promised me that she 

 would not force the girl to marry, if she came home with her then. 

 The girl said, 'This is not the truth ; my mother is only saying it,' 

 and would not leave. The mother and the younger sister then walked 

 to one of our Mapuche neighbors and asked the man there to help 

 them force the girl to return home (the girl's father had died some 

 years before). But the neighbor said he refrained always from getting 

 mixed up with other people's troubles. The mother, in a rage of 

 anger, now yelled at both the neighbor and me that if the girl did not 

 return to her home, she would fetch her relatives and they would 

 break all the windows of our house. She continued threatening. She 

 walked around the outside of our house, yelling in anger. She would 

 not leave the place. I encouraged the girl then to return home with 

 her mother, telling her that I would go with her to talk to her brothers. 

 When we arrived near her home, I saw her two brothers plowing 

 nearby. I walked to them and explained that their sister had left home 

 because she was being forced into a marriage; that this was not the 



