THE SWEAT HOUSE
65
was considered of so much importance that history has gravely recorded it as one of the notable circumstances that attended that notable wedding.
History, however, in giving so much prominence to this fact, has done injustice to the Indian woman. She was by instinct more decent than her Indian master and under favoring circumstances was neat and clean. To her a bath, although rare, was not an unknown thing, and therefore the sweat house was not ordinarily for her.
To the masculine Indian, however, a hot bath seemed the greatest sacrifice he could make to the deities that ruled disease and death, and so it happened far back in the history of the race that some aboriginal genius with a talent for inventing great sacrifices invented and
