r at home. It can never be otherwise,
men being dependent upon them for the comfort of their lives. Just
so among ourselves, wives who are neither esteemed nor loved by their
husbands have great power over their conduct by the friction of
every day, and over the formation of their opinions by the daily
opportunities so close a relation affords of perverting testimony
and instilling doubts. But these sentiments should not come in brief
flashes, but burn as a steady flame; then there would be more women
worthy to inspire them. This power is good for nothing, unless the
woman be wise to use it aright. Has the Indian, has the white woman,
as noble a feeling of life and its uses, as religious a self-respect,
as worthy a field of thought and action, as man? If not, the white
woman, the Indian woman, occupies a position inferior to that of man.
It is not so much a question of power, as of privilege.

The men of these subjugated tribes, now accustomed to drunkenness and
every way degraded, bear but a faint impress of the lost grandeur of
the race. They are no longer strong, tall, or finely proportioned.
Yet, as you see them stealing along a height, or striding boldly
forward, they remind you of what _was_ majestic in the red man.

On the shores of Lake Superior, it is said, if you visit them at
home, you may still see a remnant of the noble blood. The Pillagers
(Pilleurs), a band celebrated by the old travellers, are still
existent there.

"Still some, 'the eagles of their tribe,' may rush."

I have spoken of the hatred felt by the white man for the Indian: with
white women it seems to amount to disgust, to loathing. How I could
endure the dirt, the peculiar smell, of the Indians, and their
dwellings, was a great marvel in the eyes of my lady acquaintance;
indeed, I wonder why they did not quite give me up, as they certainly
looked on me with great distaste for it. "Get you gone, you Indian
dog," was the felt, if not the breathed, expression towards the
hapless owners of the soil;--all their claims, all their sorrows quite
forgot, in abhorrence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices
the whites have taught them.

A person who had seen them during great part of a life expressed his
prejudices to me with such violence, that I was no longer surprised
that the Indian children threw sticks at him, as he passed. A lady
said: "Do what you will for them, they will be ungrateful. The savage
cannot be washed out of them.