...
"Now these women, although they have so much trouble,
as I have said, yet are not cherished any more for it.
The husbands beat them unmercifully, and often for a
very slight cause. One day a certain Frenchman
undertook to rebuke a savage for this; the savage
answered, angrily: 'How now, have you nothing to do but
to see into my house, every time I strike my dog?'"
Surely Dr. Brinton erred grievously when he wrote, in his otherwise
admirable book, _The American Race_ (49), that the fatigues of the
Indian women were scarce greater than those of their husbands, nor
their life more onerous than that of the peasant women of Europe
to-day. Peasants in Europe work quite as hard as their wives, whereas
the Indian--except during the delightful hunting period, or in
war-time, which, though frequent, was after all merely episodic--did
nothing at all, and considered labor a disgrace to a man, fit only for
women. The difference between the European peasant and the American
red man can be inferred by anyone from what observers reported of the
Creek Indians of our Southern States (Schoolcraft, V., 272-77):
"The summer season, with the men, is devoted to war, or
their domestic amusements of riding, horse-hunting,
ball-plays, and dancing, and by the women to their
customary hard labor.
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