LIFE IN THE FAR WEST J21 



The Indian women who follow the fortunes of the 

 white hunters are remarkable for their affection and 

 fidelity to their husbands, the which virtues, it must be 

 remarked, are all on their own side ; for, with very few 

 exceptions, the mountaineers seldom scruple to abandon 

 their Indian wives, whenever the fancy takes them to 

 change their harems ; and on such occasions the squaws, 

 thus cast aside, wild with jealousy and despair, have 

 been not unfrequently known to take signal vengeance 

 both on their faithless husbands and on the successful 

 beauties who have supplanted them in their affections. 

 There are some honourable exceptions, however, to such 

 cruelty, and many of the mountaineers stick to their 

 red-skinned wives for better and for worse, often suffer- 

 ing them to gain the upper hand in the domestic 

 economy of the lodges, and being ruled by their better 

 halves in all things pertaining to family affairs ; and it 

 may be remarked, that, when once the lady dons the 

 unmentionables, she becomes the veriest termagant that 

 ever henpecked an unfortunate husband. 



Your refined trappers, however, who, after many 

 years of bachelor life, incline to take to themselves 

 a better half, often undertake an expedition into the 

 settlements of New Mexico, where not unfrequently 

 they adopt a very " Young Lochinvar " system in pro- 

 curing the required rib ; and have been known to carry 

 off, m et armis, from the midst of a fandango in Fernan- 

 dez, or El Rancho of Taos, some dark-skinned beauty 

 with or without her own consent is a matter of unconcern 

 and bear the ravished fair one across the mountains, 



