with
out a thought or care for the future they gladly gave themselves to their white masters and made loving and dutiful wives, and being used to the country and at home, made very effective helpmeets. The men accepted them upon the same terms and not one man in ten dreamed at first of the relation becoming a permanent one. They were not of the class of the settlers, and each man expeded in due time to return to England and there marry and found a family.
Some of them did dismiss their Indian wives. There were two ways of doing this. One was to pass the wife, often with a bonus of goods or furs, over to some other white man; and this although a cruel process, was much more merciful than the other, which was to send the woman back to her own people.
No one who has ever seen an Indian wife
