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INDIAN MEN AND WOMEN

tendency to grow fat and wrinkled when they could get food enough to grow fat on; the wrinkles they acquired anyway. From fifteen to twenty the Indian girl was a warm-blooded creature, not at all bad -looking, but after this she aged rapidly; at thirty was old, and at forty fit only to tan buckskins and do heavy work. In their native state very few of them lived much beyond fifty. The treatment of them by the Indian men was brutal to a degree that white women can hardly realize. Nevertheless they had a great deal of influence, and while an Indian in a fit of bad temper might in the evening knock down his tired squaw and leave her lying in the ashes by the fire, the next morning she would be his mistress of the household as usual. It was astonishing what good women the native women were, and how patiently and honestly