annual contest between the oldest squaws for the honor of becoming the sacrifice for the welfare of the tribe, and the successful competitor proudly gave her life that the rest might live.

For this story, though cited from good authority, one may well decline to vouch; but it is probably not untrue, since it is essentially of the Indian spirit. Be this as it may, the Pi-Utes unquestionably represented the most degraded aspect of Indian existence and nature. On the other hand, there were the Yumas--often called the Apaches--and the Maricopas, both agricultural tribes and most probably at one time dwellers in adobe houses. They understood the principles of irrigation and attained a high degree of Indian culture. Yet more remarkable in this respect were the Navajos, whose name is said to signify "large cornfields" and to have arisen from the extensive agriculture practised by the tribe. When they were first discovered by the Spaniards in 1541 they lived in large dwellings, partly subterranean, tilled the soil, irrigated their fields by means of artificial watercourses, or acequias, and generally displayed all the signs of the highest type of primitive civilization. Again, there were the Pueblo Indians, as they are generally known--the term is really ambiguous and probably includes many different tribes and even stocks, being given indiscriminately to the inhabitants of the ruined towns which have been found throughout Arizona and the adjacent territory. While the civilization of these town dwellers was most probably local rather than racial, an accident of situation and propinquity, it was none the less decided.

Now, among such tribes, in the most advanced state of red civilization, the status of woman was of necessity somewhat different even from that which she enjoyed among the Sioux, Comanches, or other of the great tent-dwelling peoples. Among the Navajos, who are chosen for example as being in many respects typical, the son followed the gens of his mother, the matriarchal system being in full force; while among the Sarcees, a kindred tribe, the mother-in-law was held in such respect that the husband of her daughter could not sit at meat with her, or even touch her, without rendering himself amenable to a fine. Yet polygamy existed among the Navajos, and marriage by purchase was the rule. Moreover, if we are to believe the accounts of the early explorers of the West, among all the southern tribes marital affection was practically unknown; the wife was a mere slave, and in some of the tribes so lax was the marital tie that it was not uncommon for friends to exchange wives in token of amity. So it would seem that the status of woman, contrary to the general rule, was higher where the outer signs of civilization were less marked. Except in the case of the Nehaunies, a tribe of eastern Alaska, there is no known instance of a Western gens being ruled by a woman, though, on the other hand, there seems to be little doubt that among the Navajos--whose religion was somewhat of the nature of that practised by the Aztecs, with which race they were indeed associated in stock--women at times bore a prominent part in the service of the gods, in the ceremonial of the rites and even in the reading of omens.

Conceding due consideration to the difficulty of formulating any general theory for the different tribes, even of the same scope of culture, it would yet seem certain that woman's place among the Western Amerinds was far inferior to that held by her in the East. Yet among the house dwellers, such as the Pueblos and Navajos, her lot must have been, in material matters, easier than that of her Eastern sister. In the agricultural nations we find the men doing the heavier portion of the labor incident to cultivation of the soil, though the women probably acted as sowers, gleaners, and the like, as do the peasant women of Europe to this day. On the whole, it is evident that the women of the advanced Western tribes were inferior in general status, but superior in ease of lot, to their sisters of the Atlantic slope.

It is now time to turn from the picture of the aboriginal woman as she stood at the time of the coming of the first settlers, and trace, as far as possible by general rule, the influences exerted upon her status by contact with the incoming civilization of the East. It is in the consequences of this influence that we may find an explanation of the lowering of the status of the Amerind woman; for the effect of that inroad of civilization was for long distinctly inimical to the development of the Indian. How far the theory of our culture was applicable to the needs of the Amerind can be only a subject of speculation, for the errors of application of that theory debarred the Indians from participation in any benefits which they might have received thereunder. The imperfect generalization which has been applied to the study of the American Indian is most conspicuous in error in its failure to take account of the marked degradation which ensued in the Indian character after the settlement of the country by the whites. It is not necessary or practicable here to trace the witness of this degradation in full strength; but it can be seen evidenced in the failure of the Indian woman to maintain her status, either of position or of character. We may indeed find a Queen Esther after the establishment of the colonists as owners of the country; but we never again see a Pocahontas. Under the incursions of a civilization which assumed its most repugnant form in its dealing with the Indians, there ensued on the part of the latter a reversion to a more barbarous type than had before been prevalent. Nor was this strange; for the necessities under which he found himself drove the Indian backward into barbarism. The influence of "firewater" upon the character of the red man has been often expatiated upon; but this was in truth but a small factor in the sum of the general result. A conquered race, driven from its strongholds into the primitive life of savagery to find means of sustenance, will always relapse into a state of barbarism; history is not wanting in examples of this truth. It was thus with the Indians of North America. Though the process was gradual, it was none the less sure; they found themselves involved in an unending contest for actual existence, and such a state is highly inimical to development along upward-tending lines. As has been inevitably the case in similar instances, they retrograded.

It is to this cause--never perhaps sufficiently considered in studies of the Indian nature--that must be referred much that would otherwise appear inexplicable. Even though the early colonists were as a rule ill disposed toward the Indians, as was befitting those who desired a pretext for wholesale robbery of territory, yet their narratives stand in sharp contrast to the tales of Amerind nature as we have them of later date, and in still greater contrast to our present knowledge. Instead of the progress for which one might look, if he should be of those who are convinced of the admirable effects of the introduction of our civilization, there was steady retrogression. The early colonists found a species of civilization, however crude; but it did not advance, or even continue. The Indians of the East, of course, felt the effect of the influx of white men long before their brethren of the West; and we will first glance at the effect here upon the status of woman from the new conditions.

While before the coming of the whites there was doubtless frequent warfare among the red men, and while the men were preeminently warriors, yet warfare was not their normal state. Tribal feuds there were in plenty, and these ever and again broke out into strife; but, as a rule, the tribes lived in general amity, and not infrequently, as in the case of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, there were treaties of alliance and support. With the evolution and progress of the new conditions, however, the Indian found himself an Ishmael indeed. Not only were tribal jealousies and feuds augmented, but the red men became again and again involved