304 INDIANS. 



themselves to violation. 1 The Cheyennes are the most 

 severe, not unfrequently inflicting death. A young girl 

 had become the third or fourth wife of a man at least 

 fifty years old. As was, perhaps, natural, she became 

 enamoured of a young buck, who, not having the means 

 to buy her, persuaded her to run away with him. The 

 elopement was successfully accomplished, and the young 

 couple arrived at the village of another band of the 

 same tribe, where they 'set up 7 housekeeping as man 

 and wife. Some five or six months after the whole tribe 

 was called together for the ' medicine dance.' The 

 husband found his runaway wife, and demanded that she 

 be returned over to him for punishment. Had the 

 young lover possessed any means to pay for her 

 abduction the affair would probably have been settled in 

 that way ; but, having nothing, the girl was, by order of 

 the chief, delivered to her husband. Seating her on the 

 ground, he crossed her feet so that the instep of the one 

 was over that of the other, and deliberately fired a rifle 

 ball through the two. He then formally presented her 

 to the young man, grimly remarking, ' You need not fear 

 that she will run away with any other man.' 



The Comanches split the noses of unfaithful wives ; 

 and I have seen one unlucky woman with five separate 

 gashes in her nasal organ, entirely destroying both its 

 usefulness and its beauty. These public marks have a ten- 

 dency to lessen the value of a woman should the husband 

 desire to sell, and are. therefore, not always resorted to. 



In all the plains tribes the husband has the entire 

 disposal of his wife's person, and may sell or lend her at 

 his discretion. I spent one winter at North Platte 

 Station on the Union Pacific Kailroad in charge of 

 Spotted Tail's band of Brule Sioux. There was con- 

 siderable trouble from drunken Indians ; and, when I 



1 These remarks apply to married women only. A buck forcing an 

 unmarried girl or widow would be required to take her as his wife, and pay 

 for her. The tying is a custom of the Cheyennes only. 



