The men of these native tribes are strong and vigorous; the women are, however, forced to perform most of the domestic labor, and all of the drudgery, yet it was observed that they held the purse strings. That is to say, a native buck always defers to his wife in any matter of trade as to the price either to ask or to pay. The women of Alaska are certainly in a better condition and are better treated than those belonging to any of our Western Indian tribes, with whom we are acquainted. Though they are called upon to do much menial work, they do not seem to be actually abused. The male Alaskan performs a certain liberal share of domestic duties, but not so with the Indian of our Western reservations. The latter makes his wife a beast of burden. They are generally clothed in the garments of civilization, though of coarse material and of the cheapest manufacture. The ready-made clothing store has reached even the islands of the North Pacific. Polygamy is common among the aborigines, chastity is little heeded, and young girls are sold by their mothers for a few blankets, she and not the father having the acknowledged right of disposing of them. Dr. Sheldon Jackson writes most feelingly as follows: “Despised by their fathers, sold by their mothers, imposed upon by their brothers, and ill-treated by their husbands, cast out in their widowhood, living lives of toil and low sensual pleasure, untaught and uncared for, with no true enjoyment in this world and no hope for the world to come, crushed by a cruel heathenism, it is no wonder that many of them end their misery and wretchedness by suicide.” It was found on inquiry that the ratio of births among the Alaskan shore tribes was considerably greater than among civilized communities, but the death-rate is, on the other hand, excessive. The wretched ignorance of the mothers as to the observance of the simplest sanitary laws, as well as the gross exposure of their infants, is the principal cause of this needless mortality.