190 SUPPLEMENTAL HISTORY OP MAN. 



some that seem to result from their intercourse with 

 the outcasts of European society, especially drun- 

 kenness, one of the greatest banes of civilized life. 

 Their sorrow is evinced in the most poignant man- 

 ner by tears and piercing cries ; but the storm soon 

 blows over, and their ordinary tone of mind is 

 restored. 



Their degraded savage state is strongly evinced 

 by their treatment of the women. Polygamy is 

 admitted according to the means of support of the 

 husband; but it appears the wife is always taken 

 from a tribe different from that of the husband, who, 

 in the exercise of a savage and peculiar custom, 

 steals her by force or address and cunning. Not 

 content, however, with thus separating the woman 

 of his choice, without consulting her inclinations, 

 from all her connexions, she is at first dreadfully 

 beaten and otherwise maltreated in the most savage 

 and barbarous manner; thus stolen and thus ini- 

 tiated, she becomes the wife or rather slave of her 

 cruel husband, and her relations seek no other re- 

 venge than by a similar retaliation on the husband's 

 tribe. 



They know no civil government, but are subject 

 most completely to the head of each family or tribe, 

 who is arbitrary in his little dominion. Of religious 

 tenets they may be said to be still more destitute, 

 though the voice of nature has made its way even to 

 their untutored minds, and insinuated a vague kind 

 of belief, that they are to go after death over the 



