EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF ABORIGINAL WOMEN. 185 



noted it at York Factory, where conti-acting parties, immediately 

 after the ceremony is over, return all their borrowed finery, and 

 set about their ordinai'y work, as if nothing unusual had happened). 

 In answer to my question, the old man somewhat indignantly re- 

 plied "No, no, it was so long ago." Now is it possible to trace 

 some analogy between the origin of our own honey -moon and that of 

 the Indian, and to refer it to a common soui-ce " When a man hath 

 taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be 

 charged with any business ; but he shall be free at home one year, 

 and shall cheer up his wife which he has taken." — Deut. xxiv. 5. 



It is some 2200 years ago since Aristotle taught of the dangers of 

 prematui-e wedlock to the woman, and certainly the result of these 

 precocious unions is disastrous to the child ; since it is to this, together 

 with other well recognized causes, which I treat of more fvilly in my 

 " Notes on Diseases among the Indians frequenting York Factory," 

 that I attribute the universal prevalence of scroful.i (it may be here 

 noted that Scrofula is equally prevalent in the Tropics), and early 

 development is hei'e indicated as a most marked symptom, for we 

 observe in the Indian babe, among other peculiarities, the long black 

 silky hair at birth, the very early and regular cutting of teeth, though 

 this only holds conversely good as to Darwin's teaching, as he notes the 

 tardy cutting and irregularity of teeth and diseased condition of hair 

 as typical of some tribes of Indians. Again the Indian child walks 

 very early, grows rapidly, and is very precocious generally, as a very 

 natural consequence of this early development ; the girl soon merges 

 into the marriageable female, and very shortly the child-wife becomes 

 the child-mothei- ; and this baneful disease is perpetuated. But these 

 natives, like those of tropical climes, age early, according to the laws 

 of compensation, or as Goethe expressed it : " Nature, in order to 

 spend on one side, economised on the other side." And when we 

 examine into the tent life of the Indian, or even the " herding and 

 pigging " in houses ai-ound a settlement, it is not diificult to realize, 

 irrespective of physiological causes, why the Indian child should 

 develop early. For they are treated by their parents even as one of 

 themselves, and the very nature of their lives, putting aside all ques- 

 tions of morality, or rather the utter lack of it, again teaches and 

 induces independence, and that independence, thus early taught by 

 their associations and surroundings, bids them to seek a mate, and 

 go forth in their world, " a vei-y sorry pair of phenomena." 



