e relates that in case of a domestic quarrel the husband
shoulders his gun and goes away a week or so. The neighbors naturally
say that his wife is quarrelsome. All the odium consequently falls on
her, and when he gets back she is only too willing to drudge for him
more than ever. Heckewelder naively gives the Indian's recipe for
getting a useful wife:

"Indian, when he see industrious squaw, which he like,
he go to _him_ [her], place his two forefingers close
aside each other, make two look like one--see _him_
[her] smile--which is all _he_ [she] say, _yes!_ so he
take _him_ [her] home. Squaw know too well what Indian
do if _he_ [she] cross! Throw _him_ [her] away and take
another! Squaw love to eat meat! no husband! no meat!
Squaw do everything to please husband! he do same to
please squaw [??]! live happy."

When that Indian said "he do the same to please the squaw," he must
have chuckled at his own sarcasm. Heckewelder does, indeed, mention a
few instances of kindness to a wife _(e.g._, going a great distance to
get some berries which she, in a pregnant state, eagerly desired;) but
these were obviously exceptional, as I have found nothing like them in
other records of Indian life. It must be remembered that, as Roosevelt
remarks (97) these Indians, under the influence of the Moravian
missionaries, had been

"transformed in one generation from a restless, idle,
blood-thirsty people of hunters arid fishers into an
orderly, thrifty, industrious folk; believing with all their
hearts the Christian religion."

It was impossible, however, to drive out the devil entirely, as the
facts cited show, and as we may infer from what, according to Loskiel,
was true a century ago of the Delawares as well as the Iroquois:
"Often it happens that an Indian deserts his wife because she has a
child to suckle, and marries another whom he presently abandons for
the same reason." In this respect, however, the women are not much
better than the men, for, as he adds, they often desert a husband who
has no more presents to give them, and go with another who has. Truly
Catlin was right when he said that the Indians (and these were the
best of them) were "not in the least behind us in conjugal affection!"

Thus do even the apparent exceptions to Indian maltreatment of
women--which exceptions are constantly cited as illustrations of the
rule--melt away like mists when sunligh