“In a short time I had learned to love the girl, and she didn’t seem to hate me, so I asked the parents if they would not leave her with me for a while that she might learn to like me, but they objected, whereupon I determined to steal her. After a lonely walk one evening in the forests, she agreed to be stolen. When the family left for the mountains I followed and picked the apple of my eye. Things went along happily--the honeymoon was a short dream, and the parents, for a long time, did not come to disturb me. I congratulated myself upon the success of my theft. Later, however, I learned that the parents knew about it all the time. I dressed the girl in expensive clothes, for which I had sent three thousand miles; fed her three full meals daily; built a nice warm hut; and did nearly all the camp work myself. She had not been fully dressed before, never had more than one meal a day, sometimes not one square fill in a week, and at home she always worked like a slave, shivering out a miserable, homeless existence in the forests. I showered her with luxuries and kind, gentle treatment. “By this means, and by another which I shall mention presently, I was generally able to keep her as a permanent fixture about my household. About once a week, however, she found it necessary to go into the forests to gather certain fungi, which she said were necessary for her health. At first she returned promptly from these little jaunts and she always seemed livelier and refreshed by the recreation, but later she remained away one or two days at a time. This absence I could not endure, so I sought the reason for it and found that she was meeting a big, manly young buck. I could not blame her for being enamoured with him for I admired him myself. I took him into our camp and ever since there has been peace, and restfulness, and divided love in our wild home.” This suggests a consideration of the aboriginal marriage relations, and the arrangement of the bonds of the family institution. Marriage, like almost everything Ona, is not fixed by established rules. It is arranged and rearranged from time to time to the convenience of the contracting parties. Women generally have very little to say about it. The bargain is made almost solely by the men, and physical force is the principal bond of union. For ages the strongest bucks have been accustomed to steal females from neighbouring tribes, and from neighbouring clans of their own tribe. The Onas being by far the most powerful Indians, have thus been able to capture and retain a liberal supply of wives. This easy gain of women has made polygamy a necessity, and the system is not condemned by men familiar with the people. A missionary who has been in constant contact with these Indians for thirty years gives it as his opinion that a plurality of wives was entirely satisfactory to their peculiar emotions and habits of life.