At the appointed time he approached,
leading the bride, a comely copper-colored dame attired in her
Indian finery. Her father, mother, brothers by the half dozen and
cousins by the score, all followed on to grace the ceremony and
greet the new and important relative.
The trapper received his new and numerous family connection with
proper solemnity; he placed his bride beside him, and, filling
the pipe, the great symbol of peace, with his best tobacco, took
two or three whiffs, then handed it to the chief who transferred
it to the father of the bride, from whom it was passed on from
hand to hand and mouth to mouth of the whole circle of kinsmen
round the fire, all maintaining the most profound and becoming
silence.
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.
"No sooner does an Indian belle experience this promotion, than
all her notions at once rise and expand to the dignity of her
situation, and the purse of her lover, and his credit into the
bargain, are taxed to the utmost to fit her out in becoming
style. The wife of a free trapper to be equipped and arrayed like
any ordinary and undistinguished squaw?
