FEMALE CAPTIVES. 395 



Either the character and customs of the Indians have 

 greatly changed, or Cooper and some other novelists 

 knew nothing of Indians when they placed their heroines 

 as captives in the hands of these savages. I believe I am 

 perfectly safe in the assertion that there is not a single 

 wild tribe of Indians in all the wide territory of the 

 United States which does not regard the person of the 

 female captive as the inherent right of the captor, and I 

 venture to assert further that in the last twenty-five years 

 no woman has been taken prisoner by any plains Indians 

 who did not as soon after as practicable become a victim 

 to the lust of every one of her captors. 



The rule is this. When a woman is captured by a 

 party she belongs equally to each and all, so long as that 

 party is out. When it returns to the home encampment, 

 she may be abandoned for a few days to the gratification 

 of any of the tribe who wish her, after which she 

 becomes the exclusive property of the individual who 

 captured her, and henceforward has protection as his 

 wife. 



No words can express the horror of the situation of 

 that most unhappy woman who falls into the hands of 

 these savage fiends. The husband or other male pro- 

 tectors killed or dispersed, she is borne off in triumph to 

 where the Indians make their first camp. Here, if she 

 makes no resistance, she is laid upon a buffalo robe, and 

 each in turn violates her person, the others dancing, singing, 

 and yelling around her. If she resists at all her clothing 

 is torn off from her person, four pegs are driven into the 

 ground, and her arms and legs, stretched to the utmost, 

 are tied fast to them by thongs. Here, with the howling 

 band dancing and singing around her, she is subjected to 

 violation after violation, outrage after outrage, to every 

 abuse and indignity, until not unfrequently death releases 

 her from suffering. The Indian woman, knowing this 

 inevitable consequence of capture, makes no resistance, 

 and gets off comparatively easy. The .white woman 



