Men outnumbered women in the rural Northwest for many years. This is Freeborn Church in 1914 with 2x as many men in attendance as women. It was a lonely time for many, and a rural farm begs for then female and children labor (this writer’s grandfather claimed it was 10 acres per boy). So where did these men find or buy their wives?
The 1880s Census notes that ¼ of the men of Snohomish County had found Indian wives. Just like the Cherokee and Plains Indians, there were an abundance of females. Early childhood diseases of measles, whooping cough, and small pox had a much more lethal impact on boy babies. Many of the adventurers who arrived in the Northwest to pan gold, mine, hunt and trap were single men, not to mention sons sent to the west intentionally from Europe (see Remittance Men to follow). Many of us have Indian blood in our veins, the West was a lonely place and for many villages, native women far outnumbered men. These women, the early Indian wives, are still with us on the Exit 215 Campus; the Cemetery started sometime before 1900 has many unmarked graves. Indian wives were buried (5 miles away the Chinese have their own cemetery by Lake McMurray) in church cemeteries, but only around their borders, hardly ever within.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mann_act
http://www.stumpranchonline.com/skagitjournal/WestCounty/MV-SW/WilburWidows.html
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/203/76/
History Farm Prose & Primary Level Question
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