After several pipes had been filled and emptied in this solemn
ceremonial, the chief addressed the bride, detailing at considerable
length the duties of a wife which, among Indians, are little less
onerous than those of the pack-horse; this done, he turned to her
friends and congratulated them upon the great alliance she had made.
They showed a due sense of their good fortune, especially when the
nuptial presents came to be distributed among the chiefs and relatives,
amounting to about one hundred and eighty dollars. The company soon
retired, and now the worthy trapper found indeed that he had no green
girl to deal with; for the knowing dame at once assumed the style and
dignity of a trapper's wife: taking possession of the lodge as her
undisputed empire, arranging everything according to her own taste and
habitudes, and appearing as much at home and on as easy terms with the
trapper as if they had been man and wife for years.
We have already given a picture of a free trapper and his horse, as
furnished by Captain Bonneville: we shall here subjoin, as a companion
picture, his description of a free trapper's wife, that the reader
may have a correct idea of the kind of blessing the worthy hunter in
question had invoked to solace him in the wilderness.
"The free trapper, while a bachelor, has no greater pet than his horse;
but the moment he takes a wife (a sort of brevet rank in matrimony
occasionally bestowed upon some Indian fair one, like the heroes of
ancient chivalry in the open field), he discovers that he has a still
more fanciful and capricious animal on which to lavish his expenses.
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