Part 59 (2/2)
He wrote me, 'Schoolcraft's legends are emasculated to a degree that they become no longer Indian.'”
No longer Indian, indeed! And these doctored stories, artfully sentimentalized at one end and expurgated at the other, are advanced as proofs that a savage Indian's love is just as refined as that of a civilized Christian! What Indian stories really are, the reader, if he can stomach such things, may find out for himself by consulting the marvellously copious and almost phonographically accurate collection of native tales which another of our most eminent anthropologists, Dr.
Franz Boas, has printed.[200] And it must be borne in mind that these stories are not the secret gossip of vulgar men alone by themselves, but are national tales with which children of both s.e.xes become familiar from their earliest years. As Colonel Dodge remarks (213): it is customary for as many as a dozen persons of both s.e.xes to live in one room, hence there is an entire lack of privacy, either in word or act. ”It is a wonder,” says Powers (271), ”that children grow up with any virtue whatever, for the conversation of their elders in their presence is often of the filthiest description.” ”One thing seems to me more than intolerable,” wrote the French missionary Le Jeune in 1632 (_Jesuit Relations_, V., 169).
”It is their living together promiscuously, girls, women, men, and boys, in a smoky hole. And the more progress one makes in the knowledge of the language, the more vile things one hears.... I did not think that the mouth of the savage was so foul as I notice it is every day.”
Elsewhere (VI., 263) the same missionary says:
”Their lips are constantly foul with these obscenities; and it is the same with the little children.... The older women go almost naked, the girls and young women are _very modestly clad_; but, among themselves, their language has the foul odor of the sewers.”
Of the Pennsylvania Indians Colonel James Smith (who had lived among them as a captive) wrote (140): ”The squaws are generally very immodest in their words and actions, and will often put the young men to the blush.”
DECEPTIVE MODESTY
The late Dr. Brinton shot wide off the mark when he wrote (_R. and P._, 59) that even among the lower races the sentiment of modesty ”is never absent.” With some American Indians, as in the races of other parts of the world, there is often not even the appearance of modesty.
Many of the Southern Indians in North America and others in Central and South America wear no clothes at all, and their actions are as unrestrained as those of animals.[201] The tribes that do wear clothes sometimes present to shallow or bia.s.sed observers the appearance of modesty. To the Mandan women Catlin (I., 93, 96) attributes ”excessive modesty of demeanor.”
”It was customary for hundreds of girls and women to go bathing and swimming in the Missouri every morning, while a quarter of a mile back on a terrace stood several sentinels with bows and arrows in hand to protect the bathing-place from men or boys, who had their own swimming-place elsewhere.”
This, however, tells us more about the immorality of the men and their anxiety to guard their property than about the character of the women.
On that point we are enlightened by Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, who found that these women were anything but prudes, having often two or three lovers at a time, while infidelity was seldom punished (I., 531). According to Gatschet (183) Creek women also ”were a.s.signed a bathing-place in the river currents at some distance below the men;”
but that this, too, was a mere curiosity of pseudo-modesty becomes obvious when we read in Schoolcraft (V., 272) that among these Indians ”the s.e.xes indulge their propensities with each other promiscuously, unrestrained by law or custom, and without secrecy or shame.” Powers, too, relates (55) that among the Californian Yurok ”the s.e.xes bathe apart, and the women do not go into the sea without some garment on.”
But Powers was not a man to be misled by specious appearances. He fully understood the philosophy of the matter, as the following shows (412):
”Notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary by false friends and weak maundering philanthropists, the California Indians are a grossly licentious race.
None more so, perhaps. There is no word in all their language that I have examined which has the meaning of 'mercenary prost.i.tute,' because such a creature is unknown to them; but among the unmarried of both s.e.xes there is very little or no restraint; and this freedom is so much a matter of course that there is no reproach attaching to it; so that _their young women are notable for their modest and innocent demeanor_. This very modesty of outward deportment has deceived the hasty glance of many travellers. But what their conduct really is is shown by the Argus-eyed surveillance to which women are subjected. If a married woman is seen even walking in the forest with another man than her husband she is chastised by him. A repet.i.tion of the offence is generally punished with speedy death.
Brothers and sisters scrupulously avoid living alone together. A mother-in-law is never allowed to live with her son-in-law. To the Indian's mind the opportunity of evil implies the commission of it.”
WERE INDIANS CORRUPTED BY WHITES?
Having disposed of the modesty fallacy, let us examine once more, and for the last time, the doctrine that savages owe their degradation to the whites.
In the admirable preface to his book on the Jesuit missionaries in Canada, Parkman writes concerning the Hurons (x.x.xIV.):
”Lafitau, whose book appeared in 1724, says that the nation was corrupt in his time, but that this was a degeneracy from their ancient manners. La Potherie and Charlevoix make a similar statement. Megapolensis, however, in 1644 says that they were then exceedingly debauched; and Greenhalgh, in 1677, gives ample evidence of a shameless license. One of their most earnest advocates of the present day admits that the pa.s.sion of love among them had no other than an animal existence (Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, 322).
There is clear proof that the tribes of the South were equally corrupt. (See Lawson's _Carolina_, 34, and other early writers.)”
Another most earnest advocate of the Indians, Dr. Brinton, writes (_M.N.W._, 159) that promiscuous licentiousness was frequently connected with the religious ceremonies of the Indians:
”Miscellaneous congress very often terminated their dances and festivals. Such orgies were of common occurrence among the Algonkins and Iroquois at a very early date, and are often mentioned in the _Jesuit Relations_; Venagas describes them as frequent among the tribes of Lower California, and Oviedo refers to certain festivals of the Nicaraguans, during which the women of all ranks extended to whosoever wished just such privileges as the matrons of ancient Babylon, that mother of harlots and all abominations, used to grant even to slaves and strangers in the temple of Melitta as one of the duties of religion.”
In Part I. (140-42) of the _Final Report of Investigations among the Indians of the Southwestern United States_,[202] A.F. Bandelier, the leading authority on the Indians of the Southwest, writes regarding the Pueblos (one of the most advanced, of all American tribes):
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