As among most Indian races, polygamy prevailed among the Araucanians. To the women fell the greater part of the work; indeed, it would not be overstating the case to assert that the wife did all the labor in the Araucanian household, even to those offices which the Indian of the northern continent generally performed for himself. Yet the women of the Araucanians were not ill treated as a rule. Marriage by capture prevailed, though there was about it also the elements of marriage by purchase. The friends of the wooer sought the father of the girl and requested his consent to the match; but this was rather a matter of form to even more than the usual extent, since while the father was thus being flattered the lover was searching for his bride. Invading the sanctity of her chamber and plucking her forth, by the hair or heels, as was most convenient,--for the Araucanian was somewhat strenuous in his wooing,--he threw her upon his horse and galloped off with her _à la_ Lochinvar, leaving his friends to sustain the attacks of the women, who always rallied fiercely to the defence of the bride. The latter made it a point of honor, indeed, to scream loudly for help; and, however doubtful may have been her good faith, the other women considered it a duty to their sex to accept her protests as implicit and to visit her rape upon the heads of the allies of the lover, which allies rarely escaped with unscarred faces. Having covered the retreat of the ardent swain, the friends then followed him to the sylvan haunts which he sought for concealment and from which he emerged some two or three days later with his captive, now a willing bride. No other ceremony was needful; but, if the parents of the girl were really averse to the match and rallied in time to prevent the wooer from gaining the shelter of the woods with his captive, there was no marriage; if, on the other hand, the thicket was safely gained, the marriage could not be afterward annulled. After the emergence of the wedded pair from their solitude, the friends of the husband called upon him to congratulate him and to offer him gifts, most of which had been pledged beforehand. These presents were then conveyed in procession to the father of the bride, who, if he considered that he had been paid full value for his daughter, took the bridegroom by the hand and declared his delight at the alliance. The mother, however, was supposed to be so angered with her son-in-law for the robbery of her child that she would not even speak to him or so much as look at him; and though she generally relented so far as to tell her daughter to ask her husband if he were not hungry, and upon receiving an affirmative answer proceeded to cook a feast for the assembled company, nevertheless for years after the marriage she would never speak face to face with her son-in-law, though with her back turned to him she would converse with him with entire freedom. This