Women might never eat in the society of males, not even if these males were slaves or prisoners of war.

If food was very scarce, the husband as likely as not killed and ate a wife; perhaps did this before slaying and eating a valuable dog.

(On the other hand, Mackenzie instances the case of a woman among the Slave Indians who, in a winter of great scarcity, managed to kill and devour her husband and several relations.) So terrible was the ill-treatment of the women in some tribes that these wretched beings sometimes committed suicide to end their tortures.

Even in this, however, they were not let off lightly, for the Siou men invented as a tenet of their religion the saying that "Women who hang themselves are the most miserable of all wretches in the other world".
On the other hand, the kind treatment of children by fathers as well as mothers is an "Indian" trait commented on by writer after writer.
Here is a typical description by Alexander Henry the Elder, concerning the children of the Ojibwe tribe: "As soon as the boys begin to run about, they are provided with bows and arrows, and acquire, as it were 'by instinct', an astonishing dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, butterflies, &c.

Hunting in miniature may be justly said to comprise the whole of their education and childish diversion.