222 NOTES TAKEN. 
As a general thing, Indians are non-committal, their eternal 
“may be so,” always giving them a hole to escape by. 
From Conner, I learned a great deal about his tribe. The 
Delawares are by far the most intelligent Indians in the 
South-west. By a law of their tribe, a wife is sole owner of 
all the property she may be possessed of at the time of her 
marriage, and all she may afterwards accumulate. The 
practice of purchasing a wife still exists among them. Poly- 
gamy is also allowed, but is by no means common. 
Conner told me that the price of a wife was “one horse, 
five blankets, and goods so high,” holding his hand about 
a foot from the ground, a very indefinite quantity to be sure, 
but of course understood to mean enough to satisfy the 
parent. When the bargain is concluded the woman must 
accede, there is no alternative, and hence much misery is 
entailed upon families, feelings of dislike having carried 
individuals so far as to cause them to commit murder. 
The bashful youths, get their mothers to make the bar- 
gain for them, and Jackson, who had quarreled with his 
wife before leaving home—amused me very much by his 
description of how he intended to get another when he 
returned,—He said, “ my wife all the time mad, me go out 
hunt, come back, he say, where you been devil; all time 
mad, den me say may be so you quit, den he go, now go home, 
plenty of money, may be so my mudder he catch nudder 
wife,” throwing his arm out with the same motion he used 
when throwing the lariat to noose his horse. 
