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“Yes, mine.
Old squaw, young squaw-big one, old squaw; little one, young squaw.”
“Are they both your wives?”
“Yes, both; this is old wife, that is young wife; two squaws-me!”
and the Red rascal grins with a triumphant air, through all his daubs of paint.
“Are you a Mormon, eh?”
“Plenty of Pai-Utes are Mormon chiefs; Pai-Utes very fond of Enoch,” says Red Dog, evading a direct reply to my enquiry.
Encouraged by the sound of friendly voices, the younger wife, a pretty Indian girl, peeps through her lashes, while the elder wife stares boldly up into your face, and begs.
Both women have a strange resemblance to the nomads seen about a Tartar steppe; just as their sisters on Tule River bear a strange resemblance to the Chinese females in San Francisco.
But these savage damsels bring their owner a lower price than their sisters from Hong Kong. Two hundred dollars are supposed to be the value of a comely Chinese girl.
This Pai-Ute bought his squaw for twenty dollars. Her friends, it seems, were out of luck; the snow is getting deep; elk and antelope are scarce; and they have sold her to a
1875.
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