A husband of a different temperament of mind, on detecting his wife in an adulterous act, will rarely endeavour to maim her paramour, or otherwise seriously injure him by killing his horses or dogs; but {213} his attention will be chiefly or exclusively directed to his wife, whom he punishes by cutting off her hair, rarely her ears or nose; sometimes he resorts to a different punishment, and scarifies her face and head with his knife, after which she is repudiated, and becomes a common prostitute. An inexorable man, thus circumstanced, has been known to abandon his frail partner, after subjecting her to a punishment very similar to that inflicted on the incontinent Roman matron, under the authority of the Emperors.[4] [4] The allusion is indefinite. In the reign of Augustus a law was enacted under which conviction for this offense was liable to be followed by confiscation and banishment; as habitual prostitution was not so punished, Roman matrons often chose public shame to avoid the penalties of the law. A law of Justinian made the adultery of a wife punishable by whipping and confinement in a convent during life, unless the husband remitted the confinement within two years. See Dorsey, "Omaha Sociology," in Bureau of Ethnology _Report_, 1881-82, p. 364.—ED. Mr. Dougherty, being in Ong-pa-ton-ga's lodge, heard the loud voice of supplication from an unhappy father, whose daughter had been recently taken in adultery by her husband. "O, great Ong-pa-ton-ga!" said he, "whose nose is like that of a mule, and who art greater than the Wahconda himself, condescend to intercede for my daughter with her cruel husband; do not permit her face to be disfigured, her nose to be cut off, or the disgrace of the punishment of the prairie to be inflicted upon her." A _brave_, who detected his wife in the commission of adultery, offered her no indignity, but immediately transferred her to the object of her preference, and accompanied the gift with a horse, and sundry articles of merchandize. Even a very remote degree of consanguinity is an insuperable barrier to the marriage union. This state on the part of the man, seems to be the result of love for the woman; on that of the squaw, of convenience, or acquiescence in the will of her parents. On some occasions, however, an Indian marries through ambitious motives; he is, for instance, aspiring to the acquisition of a particular dignity; he will then endeavour to quiet the opposition of some powerful individual, by intermarrying in his family.