etch would seem incomplete were no
reference made to it here. All know the poetic story: how the demi-god
Hiawatha, miraculous of birth, tutelary genius of the Indians of North
America, wise, benign, powerful, teacher of all good, protector against
all ills, marries the lovely Minnehaha, the daughter of the old Dakota
arrow-maker. Here would seem to be a union blessed of the gods; yet it
is foredoomed to bring but sorrow. Not even the power of Hiawatha can
save his beloved Minnehaha from the impending and foretold fate which is
to be hers. At last "Famine" and "Fever," two unbidden and unwelcome
guests, force entrance into her wigwam; she cannot withstand the baleful
glare of Death, and, uttering the cry of "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" she
passes alone into "the Kingdom of Ponemah, the land of the Hereafter."
It is all very beautiful in its fancy and imagination, but nowhere in
the poem do we find the American primitive woman as we have learned to
see her through the calmer eyes of those who have sought her story in
lower strata than those of poesy.

Polygamy generally prevailed among the Amerinds, and modern civilization
is accustomed to regard this as an evil from the standpoint of the
woman. It may, however, be questioned whether in this instance, as in so
many others, our pity has not been misplaced. The work of the fields was
universally performed by women, their lords and masters confining their
contribution to the household work to furnishing the table with fish and
game. Had monogamy prevailed, the lot of the wife would necessarily have
been hard; the work which she would have found to her hand would have
been more than she could accomplish, and she must have sunk under it.
But the custom of polygamy obviated such necessity, for it brought into
the household other servants who should perform the requisite tasks. It
is at least probable, though it is not an established fact, that each
household had a chief wife, to whom the rest were subservient; in fact,
there is reason to believe that the constitution of the Indian household
was not unlike that of the Israelites, wherein the added "wives" were
little else than concubines, having a legal status but not full rights
of wifeship. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that polygamy,
apart from its moral aspect, was an institution for which the Indian
wife had cause to be profoundly grateful. It ameliorated her lot in such
wise that she was really subject to no more hards