The Morning News

THEY MARRY SQUAWS.

GEN. HOWARD WRITES ABOUT SO-CALLED "SQUAW MEN."

Men Who Have Wedded Indian Maidens and Have Married White Women Later-Frontier Society and What it is Like-Some Interesting Instances Known to the Writer.

From the New York World.

An old friend of the writer of this paper often remarks that the Bible history of the children of Israel and their heathen neighbors always remind one of the present Indian customs. Probably the converse is the more exact statement, viz.: That the customs of our Indian tribes and their rough neighbors often remind us of the ancient Israelites and their strange neighbors.

In the tribe of Dan, Samson, the son of Manoah, was born about the year 1156 before Christ. He became a giant in strength, and, a half employed character, seems to have been set apart for the punishment of the wicked Philistines, who were the uncomfortable neighbors of the Danites.

On one occasion he went down to Timnath, saw a Philistine woman that delighted his eyes; so Samson said to his father: "Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well." He married her, and the result of uniting Hebrew and heathen was a most unhappy life for both. "And her father's house with fire" the enemies of Israel succeeded in making her entice and betray her husband, and so there was through this treachery a terrific war brought on. The story is familiar to every child.

A like tale, thoroughly true, repeats itself in the neighborhood of hundreds of our Indian tribes. On our frontiers, when we had frontiers, the white man, whether Spaniard, Mexican, Frenchman, English or American, who married an Indian woman, was called a "squaw man," and in a few instances the "squaw man" has been made to suffer betrayal like Samson of old; and then have resulted some of the most relentless wars of our time, accompanied with outrage, burnings and slaughter. But yet the results have not, in the main, been told. It is thought that the putting of a man upon a horse adds to the picture of the man and the horse, but while it does this, it always takes something from the dignity of the man to be so mounted.

We have hardly visited a tribe of Indians without finding at least one white man married to an Indian girl or woman. The wife soon learns from him to live in a house and to do the work, in a rough way, that women did in the house of his youth. She is raised to a higher mode of living, learns to dress fairly well and is a true friend and companion to her husband; but he himself usually has shrunk away into a lower life. His personal cleanliness suffers, his clothing is shabby and his self-respect is lowered. So in such a pair the man has less dignity in carriage, while the woman has more than the queen of the proudest Indian chieftain, but cannot well stand up and compete with her worthy white sisters in the essentials of a prosperous home life. It may be well to particularize.

Near Fort Stevens, Ore., a strong young man many years ago settled upon a farm. It was before the old governor of Washington Territory carried a shipload of marriageable teachers around Cape Horn, and white women were few and far between. He married a woman of a neighboring Indian tribe. He carried on a good trade with the garrison at the fort; was enterprising and often obtained fat contracts, and so accumulated a comfortable fortune. His squaw made him a good, faithful wife. Her love for him caused her to study to make his home more and more tidy as the years went on, but she mostly kept apart from white women. Her children learned to dress better than their mother and gathered in the useful knowledge, social and practical, of other American youth. The eldest son has already replaced his father in honest and profitable business, and the daughters are respectably married.

In eastern Oregon there was, a few years ago, a superb family. The husband was a tall, dark-eyed Frenchman. At one time for quite a period he was the trusted agent of the government. There were three beautiful daughters. In grace of figure and movement, in elegance of attire and in the various accomplishments of gifted women, few could surpass them. The wife and mother, however, always kept in the background. She was really a servant in the household. She talked little English and shrank from every social attention. She had advanced far beyond the women of her tribe, but never forgot for one moment that she was an Indian. So even here in this most successful instance of white and Indian marriage it was next to impossible for the polished French gentleman, in the estimation of his white neighbors, to rise above the recognized condition of a squaw-man."

The old "voyageurs," French emigrants to the west from Canada, who served the northwestern fur companies and traveled through the wilds of Oregon, were encouraged to settle here and there among the Indian tribes. They were naturally led to marry Indian women. The Hudson's Bay Company, it is said, made it a policy to favor such marriages. Therefore you find half-breeds and French descendants of these enterprising "voyageurs" wherever you travel in that dark region. They are not generally on a par with our best business people of the west, though some are on the front line of progress, yet, for the most part, they are a kind, steady, self-supporting race. Their sires or their grandsires were the husbands of Indian women. Many of their descendants to-day are in the west, as they usually are in Texas, proud of their Indian blood.

The first time the writer visited the Spokanes he came with a military escort to the crossing of the Spokane river, many miles below the falls. It was the bridge you cross to go from Walla Walla to Fort Colville. Here were the bell shaped tepees of the Indians pitched in irregular groups, perhaps twenty of them altogether. The skeleton poles protruded beyond the old canvas outsides, and smoke in small puffs was gently ascending above them. At the bridge was the white man who took the meager toll, living in a wretched apology for a house. The tepees in cleanliness and order were preferable. He had a poor, hopeless-looking squaw wife and numerous little half-breed children, who gazed curiously upon strangers, and ran to cover here and there upon approach. Soon a white man, a lame minister made his appearance having been invited hither from a distant mission to officiate at a wedding. He had been a man, rather of the old "Georgia cracker" order, poorly dressed in old gray clothing, perhaps 30 or 35 years of age, was the bridegroom.

The bride had come with her Indian parents. She was 16 or 17 years old, had a healthful, handsome countenance, but a very shy, downcast look. We who looked on could but feel that somehow she had been sold to this man. The ceremony began by singing of christian airs, like the "Old, Old Story," in the Spokane language, first the several tepees and then at the tollkeeper's house. The ceremony was very brief, it being that of the ordinary Presbyterian form. The minister, the bridegroom and the tollman were Americans. In all that upper country they were called "squaw-men." They will soon perfect themselves for the explanations entire tribe henceforth will look to them as white men, and as soon as possible make them and their wives their interpreters and their mediators.

Again, referring to ancient Israel, we notice that a certain Levite married a woman of Bethlehem standing she was his wife and he himself named in the records distinctly as her husband, still our translation calls her his concubine.

There are several similar interesting intermarriages between whites and Indians. For example: An old and distinguished frontier man, whose name, should I repeat it, would be at once recognized, was married after the Indian ideas of fashion. The pair had a child, a little girl, born to them. But for some reason the distinguished man left his Indian wife, probably divorcing her after the Indian mode and fashion. He then married a lady of his own people and has had since then a large and beautiful family. The squaw wife, after the separation from her husband, went back to her tribe in Washington territory, keeping the child with her. The child, at about 14 years of age, was discovered at Father Chirouse's school at Tulalip, Puget Sound, by an enterprising Frenchman. He offered his hand and was accepted, and the writer was privileged to be present at the wedding. So the little half-breed with a fair bit of education started in soon after as a housekeeper in a neat little cottage, which her lively husband maintained by log work at a neighboring mill. Before our Father above "the squaw" was doubtless, like the concubine of the ancient Levite, a bona-fide wife.

Men, however, who got so high up in the world as her husband did were never called "squaw men," and often the fact of the Indian wife in later years has been most carefully suppressed.

The son of one of our leading citizens, in the wild days of his youth, thought it would be surprising to his friends and gratifying to himself to become the husband of an Indian girl. The maiden he selected was bright and handsome, could read and write a little, and having seen only the camp life of frontier parties of white men, was flattered and delighted, and full of hope that she could perform all the social conditions of the young man's wife. After marriage, like some other white men, he drank rather freely of whisky, his favorite beverage, but unlike white bridegrooms generally he induced his bride to drink freely with him. The pair visited the nearest city and soon overturned all the ordinary staid customs of that city. It took much ready money and all of its abundant influence to keep them out of the clutches of the law. For a while he lived the life of a veritable "squaw man" and doubtless might have been so adopted in the tribe as to have become a chief and have led thousands of them in their subsequent wars with the white Americans. But his parents and friends interposed and forced him to send the woman back to the tribe. He, too, has since married a white lady and raised a family. His first bride, after that one spree into which he led her, has not ceased to respect herself, and she has managed to live and work in good homes ever since. Though circumstances made this a mesalliance, yet, in our judgment, the first marriage was the valid one of which the heavenly father knows, and the squaw woman, for a few days led astray by a dissipated man, was superior to the "squaw man."

A very able gentleman from an eastern city was attacked with a terrible disease which disfigured his face. He may or may not have been at fault. But at any rate, a sense of deep shame came over him at the sight and consciousness of his misfortune. He soon abandoned civilized life and began to wander about among the Indian tribes. He brought up at last near the Mojave mountains of Arizona. He attached himself to a small band that had a sensible, good-hearted chief. He married, it is understood, into the royal family of the tribe and has a goodly family of boys and girls living just as the Indians live. They are nomadic. They live under the boughs of trees. They plant little valleys in the spring-time with corn and potatoes. They watch and herd bands of ponies. They are with the wildest when on the warpath. Our poor friend, though of high culture, manages to be an Indian with the Indians and nothing more. He advises the chief, is often his chief of staff. He takes the Indians' part in all quarrels with their white neighbors, but manages quite often to settle difficulties amiably and so prevent outrages and bloodshed. Just as soon as this wild tribe is forced to take up land and have a permanent reserve, our poor friend will doubtless arrange, as so many others have done, to get 160 acres at least three times repeated, assigned to his wife and himself. A good house will arise in one corner and near by a large barn. Oats and barley will grow upon a part of his well-chosen acres, corn and hops upon another part. Fences will come and orchards will be inclosed. Artesian wells, pressed by the neighboring ridges into intense activity, will afford his family water to irrigate and plenty of water to drink for his household and the animals which roam more at large with the common herd. This is a type of the usual "squaw man" to be met in Arizona, New Mexico and among the Indians of the interior. In loving the Indian women well enough to expatriate themselves they manage to attain unto the compensations.

The writer does not like the cognomen "squaw men," for if we define the term as we have used it, to mean the husband of an Indian woman, it has in our American history touched the highest in the land, judges of the United States courts, members of congress, generals in the army, officers of the general staff, most prominent merchants and hundreds of citizens of the first standing in the community where they live.

Two things are usually asserted and believed in common frontier society. One is that the man who marries a squaw has degraded himself, and the other is that the issue of such marriage is bad; that is, that half-breeds are bright and shrewd enough, but deficient in moral character. This can hardly be true as a general statement. Nearly all of our interpreters for the Indians were at one time "squaw men" or half-breeds, and their moral character has not been of the best repute. Yet they compare favorably with our own citizens who have clustered around the many Indian reservations simply for greed. There is certainly no indigenous taint—nothing that education and true religion will not overcome, as it does in either white man or Indian unmixed.

O. O. HOWARD.