AM INVOLUNTARY BRIDEGROOM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15175, 14 December 1912, Page 5 (Supplement)

AM INVOLUNTARY BRIDEGROOM.

On the old Rosebud Indian Reservation, in South .Dakota,, they still laugh over the peculiar predicament into .which a new Indian agent once got himself. The agent, an unqualified "tenderfoot," was inspecting an Indian' school. Noticing that as soon as ho entered- the room every girl present brought her hair forward over her face, lie asked the teacher to tell them to throw it back so that he might see their faces. But this they refused to do, until, after much urging, one girl did finally uncover her face.

After school was over the agent wondered at the strange actions of the girl who had showed him her face. She followed him to his house, entered after him, and set about getting his dinner. As he spoke no Sioux, and she no English, he could get no explanation from her, Finally, to his relief, the teacherrode up. Shaking with laughter, he asked the agent how he liked his ' new wife ! Then the latter understood what lie had done. In certain tribes of the Sioux Indians all a man needs do in. order to get a wife is to induce a girl to uncover her face. The agent had proposed in the usual way and been accepted.

In vain did tho agent plead that he already had a wife in the East; there was only one way to get out of it. It cost him the equivalent of fourteen ponies to persuade the Indian girl's father to take her back again.