ly were tribal
jealousies and feuds augmented, but the red men became again and again
involved in the wars of the whites, so that strife became their constant
condition of existence. Battling for very life,--and, in their
bewilderment and lack of racial organization, often turning their
weapons against each other instead of the common foe,--the Indians were
soon reduced to the condition of mere wandering and militant tribes,
their culture forgotten and indeed inapplicable to the changed
conditions. In this state of affairs all that was not strictly military
became worthless; and so woman, save as leader or Amazon, lost her
rightful position in Indian society. She now became, indeed, a mere
chattel, a slave, even a detriment, however necessarily tolerated. She
was useful in producing warriors and in ministering to their physical
needs; but there her functions ceased. Though in rare instances, as in
the case of Catherine Montour, a woman might be heard at the council
fire, this was regarded as a survival of a custom decidedly "more
honored in the breach than the observance"; from a state of at least
partial equality with the men, she was soon, by the altered
circumstances of her race, reduced to a condition of abject slavery and
degradation.

The changed conditions were powerful over the nature as well as the
status of the Indian woman. The colonists always insisted most
strenuously upon the natural cruelty of the Indians; but we must
remember that this was not a quality confined to barbarism, since even
in the days of the first colonists the Inquisition was an established
institution, while the tortures practised in England during the reign of
"Good Queen Bess" might have seemed to the most enthusiastic Indian
warrior too cruel to be used by him on his worst enemy. There can,
however, be no question that the Indians, like so many other primitive
peoples, delighted in torture of their foes--though they did not emulate
their white fellows by torturing a man because he happened to differ
from them in a matter of theory. Now it has been seen in the case of
Pocahontas that it was a custom of the women to interfere to save the
lives of prisoners; and the existence of such a well-defined custom
argues a certain tender-heartedness among the women. Under the new
conditions of constant strife, however, this "quality of mercy" became a
thing of the past. It is the nature of woman to be enthusiastic in evil
as in good; and it soon