Once the avenging wrath of Chief Howhow was changed to smiles by Ogden's promise that the chief's Cowlitz daughter might have a white husband from the fort. If all marriages are not arranged in heaven, this one at least was arranged to keep a man from going there. The absent youth had no idea he was being betrothed as a way out of that ticklish moment, but made good the vicarious pledge gladly enough. Even in his extremity, Ogden had not been rash. His quick mind had put together and counted on two ideas, a chief's customary eagerness for a white son-in-law and a white lad's response to the loveliness of that Cowlitz girl—for the beauty of Howhow's daughter was unusual among Indian maidens.
4
Indian Wives
By Thomas Nelson Strong
This sympathetic account is from Cathlamet on the Columbia, a little book first published in Portland in 1906 and reprinted in a beautiful edition in 1930. Dr. Alexander Goldenweiser, professor of anthropology in the University of Oregon, describes it as "a miniature epic through which many characters pass and in which the old Indian is traced casually and selectively from the days of his opulence and joyful existence to the sad parting days of a dying people. The sympathy, the sensitivity, and reserve of the author's retrospect leave the reader with a sense of sadness, mellowed by the beauty of a truly literary presentation."
The relation of the white chiefs of the Hudson's Bay Company with native women presents a point of vivid interest in Indian history. For twenty years Fort Vancouver, like all other Hudson's Bay posts, was the home of fair-faced men and dark-faced women.
There is no doubt as to the standing of the women. They had been wedded in the ancient and orderly fashion of their people and in the forum of conscience were as much married as ever Queen Victoria was. They knew that their husbands could dismiss them at any time, but this was the ancient and inalienable right of the husband according to Indian ideas,
