From: dmatthews03@sympatico.ca   
      
   "Chris Mark"  wrote in message   
   news:20031028105555.03958.00000186@mb-m23.aol.com...   
   > >From: "Caroline Maier"   
   >   
   > >That makes it 10:2 for the whites. Any special reason??   
   >   
   > Familiarity with the names and biographies, perhaps?  Outside of a   
   few "chiefs"   
   > the names and biographies of Indians are, afaik, lost to history.  I   
   certainly   
   > would have enjoyed the life of a plains Indian youth in the glory   
   days between   
   > say, late 18th century and mid-19th century--at least as it has come   
   down to us   
   > in story.   
   > Slightly off topic, I read an article some years ago in which the   
   author stated   
   > he had collected the names of some 10,000 individual whites who had   
   "run off"   
   > to live with Indians.  What struck him was that every one of these   
   were males.   
   > Not a single female had ever voluntarily run off to join an Indian   
   tribe,   
   > although numbers had been carried off by Indians (as had numbers of   
   males--whom   
   > he did not count in his list of runaways).  A number of these had   
   made heroic   
   > efforts to rejoin their white families.  The boys who were carried   
   off almost   
   > invariably stayed with their new Indian families and grew up to be   
   "Indians."   
   > Asuming the above is an accurate representation, any thoughts on why   
   this might   
   > be so?  My own conclusions were double.  The first was that the life   
   of an   
   > Indian woman was so hard that it simply held no attractions. Plus a   
   girl would   
   > not have much opportunity to grab a rifle and disappear into the   
   backwoods,   
   > perhaps to encounter Indians and decide to join them. The other   
   conclusion,   
   > reached on reflection, was that a girl who ran away to join an   
   Indian tribe   
   > would have been seen not as full of an excess of the adventurous   
   spirit, but as   
   > a kind of traitor, willingly having conjugal relations with savages,   
   bearing   
   > "half-breed" children, denying her culture, etc., etc. In other   
   words, she   
   > became an outcast and her existence was no longer acknowledged.   
   Conversely,   
   > the captured girl who made her way back to her "kind" would be   
   widely   
   > celebrated, her struggles to return affirming the awfulness of   
   Indian life and   
   > the superiority of white civilization.   
   > Just some stray thoughts.   
   >   
   >   
   > Chris Mark   
      
      
      
      
      
   Dorothy M. Johnson (she wrote "A Man Called Horse") wrote a few   
   stories about the interaction of whites and Indians. I remember one   
   called  "Flame of the Frontier" which detailed the lives of two white   
   girls captured when children by Indians and bought up as Indian. When   
   a peace treaty was signed between the tribe and the American   
   government the girls, who were now women and who  had married Indians   
   and borne children, had the choice of either staying or returning to   
   white civilization. One stayed and one returned. Good story, well   
   worth reading.   
      
   Dave in Toronto.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)