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?  Perish the grovelling thought!  In the first place, she must have a horse for her own riding; but no jaded, sorry, earth-spirited hack, such as is sometimes assigned by an Indian husband for the transportation of his squaw and her pappooses:  the wife of a free trader must have the most beautiful animal she can lay her eyes on.  And then, as to his decoration:  headstall, breast-bands, saddle and crupper are lavishly embroidered with beads, and hung with thimbles, hawks’ bells, and bunches of ribbons.  From each side of the saddle hangs an esquimoot, a sort of pocket, in which she bestows the residue of her trinkets and nick-nacks, which cannot be crowded on the decoration of her horse or herself.  Over this she folds, with great care, a drapery of scarlet and bright-colored calicoes, and now considers the caparison of her steed complete.