rejection. There is no ceremony as the White Race understands that
term, though to the Indian there is everything that is necessary to
make the rite as binding as it is to his white brother and sister.

Though polygamy has always been practiced, the custom to-day limits
the wives to two, and only a few men have more than one wife. Where
plural wives are taken they are generally sisters. There is little
intermarriage among other tribes. Though it occasionally occurs it is
fiercely frowned upon and all parties are made to feel uncomfortable.

Prostitution with the whites and Chinese is not uncommon, and children
born of such relationship have just as good a standing as those born
in wedlock. The Indian sees no sense in punishing an innocent child
for what it is in no way responsible for. He frankly argues that only
a silly fool of a white man or woman would do so cruel and idiotic a
thing.

Children are invariably welcomed and made much of at birth, though it
is seldom a Washoe woman has more than four or five babies. They are
always nursed by the mother, and not often weaned until they are four
or five years old.

In the early days the labor of the sexes was clearly defined. The man
was the hunter and the warrior, the guardian of the family. The
woman was the gatherer of the seeds, the preparer of the food, the
care-taker of the children. To-day there is not much difference in the
division of labor. The breaking down of all the old customs by contact
with the whites has made men and women alike indifferent to what work
they do so that the family larder and purse are replenished thereby.