Sometimes an obdurate father or mother will refuse to sell a daughter, and thus expresses disapprobation of the suggested match. Occasionally, as among more civilized people, the young couple mournfully, but dutifully, acquiesce in the decision of the older people, but, more often--even, also, as white young people do--they rebel, and take the decision into their own hands by eloping and living together. This ends the matter. The ethics of the tribe are such that cohabitation once entered upon, the parents have no authority to declare the marriage void. And, as a further penalty for his obdurate obstinacy, the father loses the ten dollars or its equivalent he might have had by being kind and complaisant to the desires of the young couple. The Havasupais are polygamists, and believe in having as many wives as they can buy and support. At the time of his death Kohot Navaho had three wives living with him, and I personally know of two others that he had discarded on account of old age. When Hotouta, his oldest son, was living, his mother was a thrust-out member of Navaho's household. She was almost blind and decrepit, and Navaho with a wave of his hand and ten words had dismissed her from his bed and board. Hotouta had a tender heart and used to speak very bitterly about the injustice of this custom which allowed an old and helpless wife thus mercilessly to be discarded. Shortly before Navaho's death his oldest wife evidently "ruled the roost," and it certainly must have been by other means than her physical beauty. And yet she was vain of her good looks, for, when I made her husband's photograph, she became my strong ally in persuading him to sit before the camera, on condition that I would make a "sun-picture" of her own beautiful physiognomy and enchanting _tout ensemble_. When I made the photograph, she secured her petticoats between her legs in such a manner as to make them appear like rude trousers, and when I commented upon the unfeminine appearance and asked her to spread out her skirts in orthodox style, she boxed my ears with a manner at once decisive, haughty, and jocular, and bade me proceed as she was or not at all. The second wife was a meek kind of a creature, who seemed to be entirely under the dominion of wife number one; but the youngest wife, a buxom woman of twenty-three or four summers, evidently knew how to hold her own, for she once or twice refused to obey wife number one, though she readily obeyed the same request when given by Navaho personally. This woman is now married to my old host, Waluthama. Marriage with a white man is unknown among the Havasupais, and unlawful cohabitation with one is punishable by death.