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From: owner-hist_text-digest@lists.xmission.com (hist_text-digest) To: hist_text-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: hist_text-digest V1 #942 Reply-To: hist_text Sender: owner-hist_text-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-hist_text-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk hist_text-digest Monday, January 28 2002 Volume 01 : Number 942 In this issue: -áááááá Re: MtMan-List: toboggans/snow -áááááá Re: MtMan-List: toboggans -áááááá MtMan-List: buffalo"hump" ribs -áááááá RE: MtMan-List: buffalo"hump" ribs -áááááá Re: MtMan-List: toboggans -áááááá Re: MtMan-List: toboggans -áááááá MtMan-List: Re: accurate debauchery- more, more! -áááááá Re: MtMan-List: Re: accurate debauchery- more, more! -áááááá Re: MtMan-List: Re: accurate debauchery- more, more! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 07:55:34 -0800 From: "Lee Newbill" <bluethistle@potlatch.com> Subject: Re: MtMan-List: toboggans/snow - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wynn Ormond" <leona3@sourceoneinternet.com> > Got so much snow in Cache Valley last night I can not get out the driveway to go > to work. +/- 18" still snowing. Found the horses but you could come hunt for > the dogs. <G> North Idaho's gotten it's share, it's snowed and temp is going twixt the teens and 20's. Had to digout the tractor the other day just so I could plow the driveway. The horses have yarded up in the paddock and won't leave... even the dog has to be tossed out bark at the coons who have infested my feed shed... didna know coons liked horse food until this year. Go figger... guess they have to eat something since they ate all the chickens last year. On toboggans.... they are nifty as long as someone else pulls them. I was amazed at how much friction they generate... and as someone else noted, skinny toboggans are tippy. Regards from frozen Idaho Lee Newbill - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 14:49:47 -0600 From: "Best, Dianne" <dbest@hydro.mb.ca> Subject: Re: MtMan-List: toboggans From "ancient Indian wisdom" in the land of those what invented the toboggan: The wider the toboggan, the harder the pull and the harder it is to get through the brush. The Huron and the Iroquois added length to carry greater loads. The limiting factor is the contour of the ground - a long toboggan is more apt to break going over dips or rises. Jin-o-ta-ka (Dianne) - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 18:08:29 EST From: SWcushing@aol.com Subject: MtMan-List: buffalo"hump" ribs Klahowya boys, (and girls) I just now finished cooking up some buffalo "hump" ribs for my daughter and me... and I'm here to tell ya, they were some superb eatin! The butcher left most the fat on, much like a New York steak, and I didn't trim it off, (as some folks would recommend) when I fried em up.... I can see why the "hump" was a much favored piece of meat by the mountain men. I will buy a hand full of raffle tickets on the AMM sponsored buffalo hunt coming up, because my cache will be gone come next winter. Ymos, Magpie - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 16:02:20 -0800 From: "De Santis, Nick" <nick.de.santis@intel.com> Subject: RE: MtMan-List: buffalo"hump" ribs Ahhhhh, damn, you are hard on a guy! I can take all kinds of abuse, even about my lineage, or lack there of...but I am hungry and reading bout this good suff is hard. Just hard! lots of laughts- LOL Travler - -----Original Message----- From: SWcushing@aol.com [mailto:SWcushing@aol.com] Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 3:08 PM To: hist_text@lists.xmission.com Subject: MtMan-List: buffalo"hump" ribs Klahowya boys, (and girls) I just now finished cooking up some buffalo "hump" ribs for my daughter and me... and I'm here to tell ya, they were some superb eatin! The butcher left most the fat on, much like a New York steak, and I didn't trim it off, (as some folks would recommend) when I fried em up.... I can see why the "hump" was a much favored piece of meat by the mountain men. I will buy a hand full of raffle tickets on the AMM sponsored buffalo hunt coming up, because my cache will be gone come next winter. Ymos, Magpie - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 17:28:09 -0700 From: "BARRY CONNER" <conner_one@email.msn.com> Subject: Re: MtMan-List: toboggans I'll have to disagree with Capt. we have used toboggans copied from one that Charley Hanson had at the museum years ago, and it's 6' long and 2' wide with a pull rope on the front and a guide rope on the back. Even went as far as to put the rawhide turned up nose on ours like the original and painted the whole thing "French Blue". I use beeswax on the bottom of the split lodge pole pine to really make it glide, works great in the buck brush and will handle two to three men's camp worth of equipage, sure saves the back here in the Colorado mountains. Buck. > Klahowya Magpie, > > If your set on a toboggan go short and wide. I've watched a number of guys > fight them through soft snow, they tend to tip over if loaded too high. They > also have more resistance on the snow surface but it's still better than > carrying. > > Don't know if you ever saw that "dog sled" I made. It's from the Ben Hunt > book and not all that hard to lash up if you have some elm or etc. to bend > into a few shapes and some rawhide to lash it up with. Sure pulls nice > compared to a toboggan. And you make a solid trail for it with your snow > shoe track so it don't fall over in soft snow. If your interested I'll send > you a scan of the instruction page. > > But right off I don't know of anyone who has either for sale or trade. > > YMOS > Capt. Lahti' > > > > ---------------------- > hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html > - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 20:22:38 -0800 From: "rtlahti" <rtlahti@msn.com> Subject: Re: MtMan-List: toboggans Buck, The toboggans I was referring to were as long or close to what your talking, but not as wide and were being handled by one guy. Too much room to pile stuff on that you probably could live without. At least that was the result. I'm sure that two or three guys could handle a 6 footer by 2 just fine. Magpie and most of us are talking about a personal snow craft. I'm not familiar with the one your talking about but it sounds some what different than the usual steamed slat models that we normally come across for sale or trade (the classic "kids down the slope kind). Capt. Lahti' - ----- Original Message ----- From: "BARRY CONNER" <conner_one@email.msn.com> To: <hist_text@lists.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 4:28 PM Subject: Re: MtMan-List: toboggans > I'll have to disagree with Capt. we have used toboggans copied from one that > Charley Hanson had at the museum years ago, and it's 6' long and 2' wide > with a pull rope on the front and a guide rope on the back. Even went as > far as to put the rawhide turned up nose on ours like the original and > painted the whole thing "French Blue". I use beeswax on the bottom of the > split lodge pole pine to really make it glide, works great in the buck brush > and will handle two to three men's camp worth of equipage, sure saves the > back here in the Colorado mountains. > > Buck. > > > > Klahowya Magpie, > > > > If your set on a toboggan go short and wide. I've watched a number of guys > > fight them through soft snow, they tend to tip over if loaded too high. > They > > also have more resistance on the snow surface but it's still better than > > carrying. > > > > Don't know if you ever saw that "dog sled" I made. It's from the Ben Hunt > > book and not all that hard to lash up if you have some elm or etc. to bend > > into a few shapes and some rawhide to lash it up with. Sure pulls nice > > compared to a toboggan. And you make a solid trail for it with your snow > > shoe track so it don't fall over in soft snow. If your interested I'll > send > > you a scan of the instruction page. > > > > But right off I don't know of anyone who has either for sale or trade. > > > > YMOS > > Capt. Lahti' > > > > > > > > ---------------------- > > hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html > > > > > ---------------------- > hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html > - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 22:01:53 -0700 From: "Angela Gottfred" <agottfre@telusplanet.net> Subject: MtMan-List: Re: accurate debauchery- more, more! This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - ------=_NextPart_000_0003_01C1A847.6C7A66F0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >>Got any more great references or ideas where I can look up some of these debaucheries scenes. Please take no offense; that is how it's viewed in the present educational literature<< Not just today, either! Early 19C fur traders' journals from Canada often speak of how they (or the opposing company) "debauched" the Indians, by supplying them with ample cheap liquor. So it's a historically correct term. Your humble & obedient servant, Angela Gottfred - ------=_NextPart_000_0003_01C1A847.6C7A66F0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <html xmlns:o=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" = xmlns:w=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" = xmlns:st1=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" = xmlns=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"> <head> <META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; = charset=3Dus-ascii"> <meta name=3DProgId content=3DWord.Document> <meta name=3DGenerator content=3D"Microsoft Word 10"> <meta name=3DOriginator content=3D"Microsoft Word 10"> <link rel=3DFile-List href=3D"cid:filelist.xml@01C1A844.F2FBB830"> <o:SmartTagType = namespaceuri=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name=3D"country-region"/> <o:SmartTagType = namespaceuri=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name=3D"place"/>  <style>  </style>  </head> <body lang=3DEN-US link=3Dblue vlink=3Dpurple = style=3D'tab-interval:36.0pt'> <div class=3DSection1> >>Got any more great references or ideas where I can look up some of these debaucheries = scenes. Please take no offense; that is = how it's viewed in the present educational = literature<<<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Not just today, either! Early 19C fur = traders’ journals from <st1:country-region><st1:place>Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> often speak of how they (or the opposing company) = “debauched” the Indians, by supplying them with ample cheap liquor. So it’s a historically correct term.<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Your humble & obedient = servant,<o:p></o:p> Angela Gottfred<o:p></o:p></p= > </div> </body> </html> - ------=_NextPart_000_0003_01C1A847.6C7A66F0-- - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 21:32:59 -0800 From: JW Stephens <lray@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Re: accurate debauchery- more, more! Kinda long because there is a lot of background detail before the fact. I compiled this to give some of my friends who were not familiar with the RMFT era a peek at how different the native culture was. They had tended to view history as all WASP, all the time. My introduction to religion, OTOH, was courtesy of the Lakota in Nebraska in the early '70s. Maybe some of you pinned inside by a big snow can drag this out and read all of it. Maybe most of you already have. :-) Source: "Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker" by Bil Gilbert, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK. Beginning pp.159 {A horse stealing incident where Joe Walker uses his influence with the Utes to make sure that property is restored to the Snake (Bannock) indians} Beyond the threats of force and his own reputation, Walker had another lever with the Utes that Meek did not mention and perhaps did not know about. He had obtained it in a previous incident, where again he acted somewhat as if he still thought of himself as a sheriff, not just of Jackson County but of the entire Great Basin. Returning from a trip to the Crow country, Walker came upon a Snake raiding party that had taken three Ute captives, two women, one with an infant at her breast. The Snakes planned to put the three to death when the proper ceremonial occasion occurred, but Walker negotiated and was able to purchase the women and the child. Though he himself was going in the opposite direction, he gave the women directions and an introduction to his old friend Warren Ferris, who, he knew, was starting south into Ute country on a trapping-trading trip. The women found Ferris and traveled with him until, somewhere south of the Great Salt Lake, they were restored to their people. A that time Ferris discovered what perhaps Walker had known from the beginning: that one of the women and infant were the wife and son of Con-man-ra-nap, or, as he was also called, Walkara. Walkara, already a prominent chief, was to become the most famous and feared red leader in the southwest. The Ute warriors who rode with him constituted the best light cavalry west of the Sioux and Cheyenne, and with them he raided and fought from Colorado to California and deep into Sonora and Chihuahua. He was a man of personal charm and magnetism with a genuine flair for guerrilla tactics. Because of his style and success, some whites who did not have to deal directly with him found him romantic and called him the Desert Napoleon. A Sagebrush Captain Kidd would have been more like it. He was not a racial leader on the order of a Tecumseh or Sitting Bull, fighting in the interests or defense of his people. More often, Walkara rode against either whites or Indians--and often with the former--for personal gain and glory. Even some of his own Ute people found his methods excessive. His specialties were stealing horses and raiding other Indian and Mexican communities for their women and children. Those he did not wish to keep for his personal use he sold in Chihuahua, Santa Fe and Taos, where the slave trade flourished until well after the American Civil War. Navajos, Paiutes, Zuni, and rural Mexicans were the principal victims of this traffic. Walkara's greatest exploit (of which more later) was organizing a massive raid in which he rode to the outskirts of Los Angeles and there stole at least 3,000 and perhaps as many as 5,000 horses. Even the lower figure appears to stand as the American rustling record. Since he was reported to have had at various times thirty of them, Walkara may not have placed much intrinsic value on the single wife rescued by Walker from the Snake tribe. However, he had a Bedouin sense of honor, as well as life-style, and felt obligated for the favor. Thereafter he frequently and openly demonstrated his high regard for Walker. Beyond question he was a good friend to have. Throughout Walkara's domain, Walker traveled and traded among the wild Utes in peace and security. ... There were occasions when the behavior of other resident white men was comparable to Walker's when he aided the paralyzed Crow warrior, returned rustled horses to the Snakes and Snake captives to the Utes. There was an element of self-interest in such actions since they enhanced the reputations of the traders and put potential customers in their debt. However, men like Walker, the Bents and Jim Bridger also cared for the tribes because they were their own people. Ironically, these frontier figures are often remembered only as bloody killers. They did kill and fight but often with their own Indians against tribal foes. Even as enemies, they acted as warriors, in ways the tribes found comprehensible and honorable. The might take scalps, but unlike the whites who came later, farmers, ranchers and soldiers, they had no reason to destroy the independent Indian nations or drive them from their lands. Others, generally far removed from the scene, sometimes found Indians admirable and romantic and became exercised in cerebral ways about their mistreatment. But it was this small group of men who came to the mountains and plains in the 1820s and remained there who provided nearly all the visceral Indian lovers in the American westering movement. With very few exceptions, resident whites took Indian wives, not in such bestial and predatory ways as was often imagined in the east, but as was proper according to the customs of the tribes. If nothing else, this was good for business. "Men in charge of trading posts like to marry into prominent Indian families," wrote Edward Denig, who was the bourgeois of Fort Union, the AFC's [American Fur Company] citadel on the upper Missouri. Denig was a well-educated, cultured man of many civilized attainments. However, like nearly all the company and independent furmen of the time, he had an Indian wife. She was Deer Little Woman, the sister of two leading Assiniboin chiefs, in her own right a woman of exceptional beauty and character, of whom Denig was very proud. "By such connection," Dening went on, "they increase their adherents, their patronage is extended, and they make correspondingly larger profits. Their Indian relatives remain loyal and trade with no other company. They have the further advantage of being constantly informed through their association with the former as to the demands of the trade and the village or even the tent where they can immediately find buffalo robes stored away." Again, there was much more than commerce involved. The white men who came early into the far west found the native women one of the great attractions and rewards of the place. They were fascinated by their beauty, style, liveliness, erotic and domestic behavior. This interest was so pronounced that after having had a chance to observe the behavior of furmen coming up the Missouri, an Arikara chief asked one of them with fine irony, "I was wondering whether you white people have any women amongst you. One might suppose they [the trappers] had never seen any before." For those who did not have the money or inclination for more, there were whores, often with male relatives acting as enthusiastic pimps, who congregated at rendezvous and established trading posts. However, substantial and permanent men like Walker, Denig, Andrew Drips, William Bent and many others sought the pleasure, convenience and respectability of more regular unions. Mores varied from tribe to tribe. The Cheyenne and Sioux placed a high, in some cases almost psychopathic value on premarital chastity--for women--while the Crow and Arikara found this of little concern. But in general, sexual relations were much freer, easier and more permissive than in the fairly inhibited and still puritanical society from which the white men came. The traditions of romantic love and related displacement activities had not evolved among the western Indian, but neither had notions that sex was something shameful that had to be dealt with secretly. Individuals openly expressed their physical interest in members of the opposite sex, and courtship rituals were neither long nor elaborate. In some tribes couples announced they were man and wife simply by commencing to live and travel together as such. More often marriages--which seldom involved much ceremony since mating was generally thought to be a natural, nontheological phenomenon--were arranged and took place after a would-be groom had made suitable payment to the family of his intended. Almost anywhere in the plains or mountains a marriageable woman was worth at least one horse, and in some nations and circumstances an attractive bride cost a dozen horses or their equivalent ($500 to $1000) in trade goods. To steal such a valuable possession was grand larceny, and to damage it was very malicious mischief. Any man who committed this sort of rustling could not live peaceably or at all in the tribal territories since a father and brothers were within their rights to hunt him down as a felon. White men who wanted both a woman and to stay in the country accepted these customs and paid the going price. There is no record of any who took their wives by force. One of the things that most astonished and delighted the white men was the manner and mood in which their Indian wives discharged their domestic duties. According to numerous testimonials, they made not only interesting lovers but marvelous lodge keepers, home economists and mothers. In this regard their behavior reflected the fact that in almost all the Indian nations the roles of men and women were, by tradition, clearly defined and mutually exclusive. First and foremost a man should be a brave warrior and, as a hunter, raider, extortionist or trader, a good provider. Religion, fraternal ceremonies, politics, diplomacy and travel were suitable secondary masculine interests. These were such noble pursuits that it was unseemly for a husband to be distracted or wearied by lesser ones. Therefore, all other work of the tribe or family was performed by the women. This included not only ordinary domestic chores but making and maintaining the supplies and equipment men needed in their business. The work was to be done cheerfully and unobtrusively so that the men would be rested and in a good frame of mind for their ventures. If a lodge leaked, a woman was to patch it before her husband had reason to complain. For her to nag him about the job as a frontier white wife might about a rotten cabin roof was unthinkable, a serious domestic offense justifying a sound beating. "Women," said Walter McClintock, a white man who spent some time with the Blackfeet after the power but not the traditions of that tribe had declined, "considered it a disgrace for men to do any of their work--put up lodges, tan skins, cook food at home or look after the provisions; all this was woman's work in which they were trained from childhood, and they resented any interference from the men." Indian men took these arrangements for granted, but whites found them almost utopian. Beyond satisfying them sexually and caring royally for their other creature comforts, Indian wives provided them with entree into the tribes, served when needed as interpreters and guides and performed all manner of miscellaneous chores--tanning beaver, drying meat, foraging for herbs, making moccasins and leggings, tending, raising, and moving camp--which allowed a man to live well and prosper. Not surprisingly, the important furmen who were able to marry well within the tribes regarded their Indian wives as not simply available substitutes for white ones but as far superior, being prettier, cleaner, more stylish, seductive and much more useful than white women. Some said as much, and many others indicated that this was their opinion by keeping their Indian wives even when they moved back to the settlements. As for the other side, what Indian women thought about white men, none of the hundreds who lived with them left a formal record of their feelings. However, their behavior indicated they were equally pleased. For many white men the problem was not finding an Indian wife but diplomatically selecting one from among numerous eager candidates without giving offense to the rejected women or the fathers and brothers negotiating on their behalf. The vision of shy, trembling maidens being dragged from their families and friends and delivered into the clutches of terrifying white devils is pure fiction. To the contrary, a good many girls who caught a white husband put on great airs and bragged insufferably to their less fortunate sisters about their success. One reason for this attraction was that foreigness in itself often seems to have had an aphrodisiac effect on both sexes. As the furmen were aroused by the exotic dress, manners and color of the native girls, the women apparently found white skins, blue eyes and flowing beards erotically stimulating. Also, while the early plains and mountain men came, as a rule, from the hardest and least sentimental classes of white society, they were, in comparison to Indian men, Lotharios and Lochinvars so far as romantic sensibilities were concerned. Kit Carson and Joe Meek, notable ladies' men, both fought duels over girls--an Arapaho and Shoshoni respectively--with whom they had fallen in love and then married. From an Indian standpoint, to become so emotionally befuddled by a woman was astonishing, but the girls found it titillating. For the same reason, the romantic tradition in their culture, white men made safer, more considerate husbands than did Indians, disciplining their wives less harshly and generally being more indulgent. Most important, the sort of men who wanted wives appeared, by Indian standards, to be very rich. This automatically certified them as good men--that is, valiant warriors, energetic hunters and shrewd traders since in the tribal frame of reference wealth came from success in these activities. For an Indian woman an affluent husband not only made her life easier and materially more secure but was also the ultimate status symbol, indicating she could attract, keep and support a great man. The wealth of whites obviously recommended them highly to the male relatives of marriageable women. Most agreeably they discovered that white men were strangely soft-headed in these negotiations. In consequence fathers or brothers were often able to get two or three times more from whites than that which an Indian suitor would pay for a daughter or sister. The greatest fleecing ever recorded in such a transaction was perpetrated by Comcomly, a Chinook chief who sold his daughter to Duncan McDougall, the bourgeois of a British trading post. The marriage price was fifteen blankets, 2-1/2 feet wide, fifteen guns and "a great deal of other property." Another trader, Alexander Henry, who witnessed the deal, was shocked by it and commented, "This Comcomly is a mercenary brute, destitute of decency." The brides were flattered by the high value white men placed on them and after marriage were delighted to discover that their foreign husbands were exceptionally willing to continue to spend extravagantly. To please and honor his first wife, the Shoshoni Mountain Lamb, Joe Meek, when he was still flush, blew almost the entire proceeds of a year's trapping by buying her a $300 horse, $150 saddle, $50 bridle and about $200 worth of boots, blankets, beads, a blue broadcloth skirt, scarlet blouse and leggings. These were Meeks' figures, and he was generally shaky about large numbers, but in this case he may have been nearer to the truth than usual. [The Little] Mountain Lamb was one of the great beauties of the west, and he was much in love with her. (Hope that you have found this interesting. My typing fingers about given out.) B'st'rd - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 21:47:09 -0800 From: JW Stephens <lray@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Re: accurate debauchery- more, more! But wait, there's more ... (Sorry Barney, ye have already seen these) >From "Give Your Heart to the Hawks" by Winfred Blevins: MOUNTAIN MATING When alien peoples meet, the saying goes, first they fight and then they fornicate. The trappers and Indians did both, as mood and circumstance might dictate. The opportunity for some great sex was probably one of the primary lures of the mountains for the whites, and the squaws seem to have relished it with the trapper, in or out of marriage, avidly enough to fulfill his wildest fantasies. The status of women in Indian tribes was low. The were property and treated as such. They were saddled with all the domestic work, because a brave's honor would not allow him to touch it. They were made beasts of burden and traded like horses. Like many "primitive" peoples, Indians made women the objects of distrust, hostility, and taboos. Their lives were so miserable that some Sioux women, for instance, would kill newborn girl children as an act of mercy; or they hanged themselves to escape the degradation of femininity. So the women certainly could expect no worse from the white man than they could get at home. Compared to white attitudes toward sex, Indians were utterly uninhibited. They suffered from no embarrassment, shame, or secretiveness about it. With rare exceptions, they had no concept of chastity, in the sense of abstinence before marriage. Teenage girls and boys alike were expected to take their pleasure where they could find it. (Adultery was a somewhat different matter.) Adults coupled freely in front of children or anyone else. One prominent chief was often seen walking about his village naked, displaying an erection. Public ceremonies in which men and women copulated with anyone other than their own husbands or wives were common among the plains tribes. And the American Indian was completely innocent of the notion that something he enjoyed sexually might be "wrong." "Wrong" would have been an incomprehensible concept to them in that context. They were just as uninhibited in other matters where white culture invokes strong taboos. Homosexuals, called berdashes, populated every tribe and drew no censure; they were thought to be following visions given them in childhood; many were even warriors. Sex with an animal was perfectly permissible, too. So was sex with a recently killed enemy, usually as a final humiliation. <N.B. B'st'rd: Other readings have this, and the coupling with other than spouses, purposed to tap the "medicine" of the other party.> On the other hand, Indian marriage had conventions alien to the white newcomers. Polygamy was common. Wives were a sign of wealth, so a brave accumulated as many as he could afford. Romantic love was a notion that the Indians simply did not have (again like most "primitive" peoples). Marriage was a necessary living arrangement, predicated on economic considerations; accommodation, duty, and obedience rather than love ruled it. Divorce was easy for both sexes: A brave simply told his woman to get out; a squaw simply left to live with another man. (For a woman to be single was out of the question.) For men, adultery was natural; for women, it was a punishable offense--an offense not against love or the marriage bed, but against property. A brave could dispose of his female property as he liked--lend her, trade her, or sell her. A squaw was not to give away what belonged to her man. Some tribes were amiably tolerant of adultery; but the Blackfeet killed straying squaws, or cut off their noses. (Even so, it was common: Prince Maximlian of Wied observed that in the Blackfoot tribe he saw, half the women had no noses.) The trappers, brought up in a society where women covered even their ankles, sat sidesaddle on horses to disguise the fact that they had legs, and never, ever referred to the biological difference between make and female human beings, naturally looked forward to any meeting with friendly Indians as a sexual field day. They pursued the squaws with an enthusiasm quite incomprehensible to the Indians, who had no way of knowing that the whites were plucking forbidden fruit. And the willingness of Indian women was proverbial. Records of it extend all the way back to Vespucci's visit to the New World in 1497. The squaws of the plains and mountains were as sensual and fun-loving as any. They also were inclined to regard white men as gods, or at least as creatures with extraordinary medicine. Crow women were especially fond of white men, which doubtless accounts for part of the trapper's long-time affection for the Crows. Aside from general sexual appetite, a squaw had plenty of reasons to bed a white man. It was hospitable, a way to show the friendship of herself, her father or husband, and her tribe to any trapper. Or she might want the baubles she sometimes got--trivia to the trappers, but great wealth and magic to her. Or her man might want the firewater, the tobacco, or the knife he could get for her. To expect compensation for the loan of a woman was as reasonable as to expect it for the loan of a horse. The guilt-ridden notion of prostitution never entered in. And the white man was lustily eager. The reason was, partly, that he generally had been enduring a bachelor life. It is also not hard to imagine that he reveled in living out the common male fantasies about using women, owning them, and being able to demand that any whim be catered to. The trappers had come from a sexually repressive society, and desires must have been expressed explosively. Think of the elation at discovering that, in many ways, squaws were preferable to white women. They were often strikingly attractive; they had high standards of cleanliness for the circumstances in which they lived; they were clever at using scents and other small allurements. But, mostly, they like to do almost anything sexually. They liked to do things that only whore would do back in the settlements--and that many states still have laws against today. There were blasts of wish-fulfillment. Once the first flush of enthusiasm passed, many trappers settled into permanent or semi-permanent relationships with squaws. Becoming a squaw man, though, was a luxury usually reserved for the free trapper. It was expensive. He had to come up with a dowry in horses, buffalo robes, furs, or other goods. At every rendezvous, he had to buy his squaw enough foofuraw to make her outshine all the other squaws; keeping ahead of the Joneses applied in the mountains, too. And, worst of all, he had to be generous to all her relatives, who turned out to be an entire village, if not an entire tribe. To reaffirm his friendship to each one, he had to come up with an interminable number of presents. He may still have gotten a bargain. He got an companion and a lover; and his woman had been well trained in obedience and domestic skills by her people. She dressed his furs. She made his clothes from skins with a skill that was often beyond him. She made his lodge into and orderly home. She provided mountain cuisine, took care of his animals, skinned his kill, carried his water and wood. She taught his children to be his servants as well. And as a bonus, she warmed his home with the mythic tales of her people and with superbly scatological jokes. For the squaw, the arrangement was even better. When she acquired a trapper for a husband, she acquired high social status and unimaginable wealth. And she assured herself of better treatment than she would have gotten among her own people. A trapper might lodgepole her occasionally to teach her submission, but that would be mild compared to what her mother and sisters endured. If he chose to divorce her, no one would be offended or censorious. He would simply tell her to go home. Perhaps he would even send a few presents along with her to prevent hurt feelings. And then her father could collect a second dowry by selling her to another man. After all, it is no great matter to return merchandise no longer wanted. The mountain men learned to adopt the attitudes of their mentors, the Indians, in these matters. Listen, for instance, to (Frederic) Ruxton's fictional Killbuck recalling his "marriages" for a trapper tempted by a Taos girl. (And notice that, Indian-fashion, he begins his dissertation on marriage by counting his coup). "From Red River, away up north, among the Britishers, to Heely (the Gila River) in Spanish country--from the old Missoura to the Sea of Californy, I've trapped and hunted. I knows the Injuns and thar 'sign.' and they knows me, I'm thinkin. Thirty winters has snowed on me in these har mountains, and a niggur or a Spaniard would larn 'some' in that time. This old tool" (tapping his rifle) "shoots 'center,' she does; and if thar's game afoot, this child knows 'bull' from 'cow' and ought to could. That deer is deer, and goats is goats, is plain as paint to any but a greenhorn. Beaver's a cunning crittur, but I've trapped a 'heap,' and at killing meat when meat's a-running, I'll 'shine' in the biggest kind of crow. For twenty years I packed a squaw along. Not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot--the darndest slut as ever cried for fofarrow. I lodgepoled her on Colter's Creek, and made her quit. My buffler hos, and as good as four packs of beaver, I give for old Bull-tail's daughter. He was head chief of the Rickaree, and 'came' nicely 'round' me. Thar warn't enough scarlet cloth, nor beads, nor vermilion in Sublette's packs for her. Traps wouldn't buy her all the frofarrow she wanted; and in two years I'd sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of Jake Hawkin's guns--this very one I hold in my hands. Then I tried the Sioux, the Shian, and a Digger from the other side, who made the best moccasin I ever wore. She was the best of all, and was rubbed out by the Yutas in the Bayou Salade. Bad was the best; and after she was gone under, I tried no more .... "Red Blood won't 'shine' any ways you fix it; and though I'm h--- for 'sign,' a woman's breast is the hardest kind of rock to me, and leaves no trail that I can see of." B'st'rd - ---------------------- hist_text list info: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/maillist.html ------------------------------ End of hist_text-digest V1 #942 ******************************* - To unsubscribe to hist_text-digest, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe hist_text-digest" in the body of the message.