Part 60 (1/2)

”Chast.i.ty was an act of penitence; to be chaste signified to do penance. Still, after a woman had once become linked to a man by the performance of certain simple rites it was unsafe for her to be caught trespa.s.sing, and her accomplice also suffered a penalty. But there was the utmost liberty, even license, as toward girls. Intercourse was almost promiscuous with members of the tribe. Toward outsiders the strictest abstinence was observed, and this fact, which has long been overlooked or misunderstood, explains the prevailing idea that before the coming of the white man the Indians were both chaste and moral, while the contrary is the truth.”

Lewis and Clarke travelled a century ago among Indians that had never been visited by whites. Their observations regarding immoral practices and the means used to obviate the consequences bear out the above testimony. M'Lean (II., 59, 120) also ridicules the idea that Indians were corrupted by the whites. But the most conclusive proof of aboriginal depravity is that supplied by the discoverers of America, including Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus on his fourth voyage touched the mainland going down near Brazil. In Cariay, he writes,[203] the enchanters

”sent me immediately two girls very showily dressed.

The elder could not be more than eleven years of age and the other seven, and both exhibited so much immodesty that more could not be expected from public women.”

On another page (30) he writes: ”The habits of these Caribbees are brutal,” adding that in their attacks on neighboring islands they carry off as many women as they can, using them as concubines. ”These women also say that the Caribbees use them with such cruelty as would scarcely be believed; and that they eat the children which they bear to them.”

Brazil was visited in 1501 by Amerigo Vespucci. The account he gives of the dissolute practices of the natives, who certainly had never set eye on a white man, is so plain spoken that it cannot be quoted here in full. ”They are not very jealous,” he says, ”and are immoderately libidinous, and the women much more so than the men, so that for decency I omit to tell you the ... They are so void of affection and cruel that if they be angry with their husbands they ... and they slay an infinite number of creatures by that means.... The greatest sign of friends.h.i.+p which they can show you is that they give you their wives and their daughters” and feel ”highly honored” if they are accepted.

”They eat all their enemies whom they kill or capture, as well females as males.” ”Their other barbarous customs are such that expression is too weak for the reality.”

The ineradicable perverseness of some minds is amusingly ill.u.s.trated by Southey, in his _History of Brazil_. After referring to Amerigo Vespucci's statements regarding the lascivious practices of the aboriginals, he exclaims, in a footnote: ”This is false! Man has never yet been discovered in such a state of depravity!” What the navigators wrote regarding the cannibalism and cruelty of these savages he accepts as a matter of course; but to doubt their immaculate purity is high treason! The att.i.tude of the sentimentalists in this matter is not only silly and ridiculous, but positively pathological. As their number is great, and seems to be growing (under the influence of such writers as Catlin, Helen Hunt Jackson, Brinton, Westermarck, etc.), it is necessary, in the interest of the truth, to paint the Indian as he really was until contact with the whites (missionaries and others) improved him somewhat.[204]

THE n.o.bLE RED MAN

Beginning with the Californians, their utter lack of moral sense has already been described. They were no worse than the other Pacific coast tribes in Oregon, Was.h.i.+ngton, British Columbia, and Alaska.

George Gibbs, the leading authority on the Indians of Western Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton, says regarding them (I., 197-200):

”Prost.i.tution is almost universal. An Indian, perhaps, will not let his favorite wife, but he looks upon his others, his sisters, daughters, female relatives, and slaves, as a legitimate source of profit....

Cohabitation of unmarried females among their own people brings no disgrace if unaccompanied with child-birth, which they take care to prevent. This commences at a very early age, perhaps ten or twelve years.”

”Chast.i.ty is not considered a virtue by the Chinook women,” says Ross (92),

”and their amorous propensities know no bounds. All cla.s.ses, from the highest to the lowest, indulge in coa.r.s.e sensuality and shameless profligacy. Even the chief would boast of obtaining a paltry toy or trifle in return for the prost.i.tution of his virgin daughter.”

Lewis and Clarke (1814) found that among the Chinooks, ”_as, indeed, among all Indians_” they became acquainted with on their perilous pioneer trips through the Western wilds, prost.i.tution of females was not considered criminal or improper (439).

Such revelations, ill.u.s.trating not individual cases of depravity, but a whole people's att.i.tude, show how utterly hopeless it is to expect refined and pure love of these Indians. Gibbs did not give himself up to any illusions on this subject. ”A strong _sensual_ attachment often undoubtedly exists,” he wrote (198),

”which leads to marriage, and instances are not rare of young women destroying themselves on the death of a lover; but where the idea of chast.i.ty is so entirely wanting in both s.e.xes, _this cannot deserve the name of love_, or it is at best of a temporary duration.” The italics are mine.

In common with several other high authorities who lived many years among the Indians (as we shall see at the end of this chapter) Gibbs clearly realized the difference between red love and white love--between sensual and sentimental attachments, and failed to find the latter among the American savages.

British Columbian capacity for s.e.xual delicacy and refined love is sufficiently indicated by the reference on a preceding page (556) to the stories collected by Dr. Boas. Turning northeastward we find M'Lean, who spent twenty-five years among the Hudson's Bay natives, declaring of the Beaver Indians (Chippewayans) that ”the unmarried youth, of both s.e.xes, are generally under no restraint whatever,” and that ”the lewdness of the Carrier [Taculli] Indians cannot possibly be carried to a greater excess.” M'Lean, too, after observing these northern Indians for a quarter of a century, came to the conclusion that ”the tender pa.s.sion seems unknown to the savage breast.”

”The Hurons are lascivious,” wrote Le Jeune (whom I have already quoted), in 1632; and Parkman says (_J.N.A._, x.x.xIV.):

”A practice also prevailed of temporary or experimental marriage, lasting a day, a week, or more.... An attractive and enterprising damsel might, and often did, make twenty such marriages before her final establis.h.i.+ng.”

Regarding the Sioux, that shrewd observer, Burton, wrote (_C. of S._, 116): ”If the mother takes any care of her daughter's virtue, it is only out of regard to its market value.” The Sioux, or Dakotas, are indeed, sometimes lower than animals, for, as S.R. Riggs pointed out, in a government publication (_U.S. Geogr. and Geol. Soc._, Vol. IX.), ”Girls are sometimes taken very young, before they are of marriageable age, which generally happens with a man who has a wife already.” ”The marriageable age,” he adds, ”is from fourteen years old and upward.”

Even the Mandans, so highly lauded by Catlin, sometimes brutally dispose of girls at the age of eleven, as do other tribes (Comanches, etc.).

Of the Chippewas, Ottawas, and Winnebagoes we read in H. Trumbull's _History of the Indian Wars_ (168):

”It appears to have been a very prevalent custom with the Indians of this country, before they became acquainted with the Europeans, to compliment strangers with their wives;”

and ”the Indian women in general are amorous, and before marriage not less esteemed for gratifying their pa.s.sions.”