312 INDIANS. 



When spring opens the camp breaks up, and the bands 

 lead a nomadic life. Everything has to be packed and 

 unpacked, put on horses and taken off again ; and the 

 women, who do all the work, are very sure gradually to 

 abandon those things which are of little use. 



Their own clothing and finery are packed in the par- 

 fleches, and easily cared for ; but everything bulky or 

 cumbersome, and not of absolute necessity, is thrown away. 

 Another reason for this poverty is the necessity of pro- 

 perly fitting out the dead for his journey to the Happy 

 Hunting Grounds. He must have certain articles even if 

 the living have to go without, and this religious necessity 

 keeps them nearly impoverished in almost all articles of 

 civilised manufacture. 



Indians marry very young the buck as soon as he 

 is fortunate enough to steal the horses to pay for her, or 

 can persuade his father to buy a wife for him. Girls gene- 

 rally marry very soon after the age of puberty the father, 

 as a rule, being anxious to realise her value; and the girl, 

 with true feminine instinct in these matters, wishing to be 

 a woman and have a husband as soon as possible. Some- 

 times a father gets ' hard up,' and has to sell his girls 

 while they are yet mere children. These are eagerly 

 bought up cheap by middle-aged well-to-do bucks, who 

 keep them for future use, giving them, however, even whilst 

 children, all the rights and privileges of wives. Sa-na-co, 

 a Comanche chief, and the best Indian (from our stand- 

 point) I ever saw, had a wife only about ten years old. I 

 have seen several other warriors who have had mere 

 children as their third or fourth wives. 



The natural result of the total lack of privacy in an 

 Indian lodge is a corresponding lack of modesty or deli- 

 cacy. Those acts of domestic life which among whites 

 occur in secret are performed by the Indians without 

 hesitation in the presence of adults and children of both 

 sexes. 



To the possibly already overcrowded lodge, the young 



