Part 65 (1/2)
SUICIDE AND LOVE
Having thus disposed of elopements, let us examine another phenomenon which has always been a mainstay of those who would fain make out that in matters of love there is no difference between us and savages.
Waitz (III., 102) accepts stories of suicide as evidence of genuine romantic love, and Westermarck follows his example (358, 530), while Catlin (II., 143) mentions a rock called Lover's Leap,
”from the summit of which, it is said, a beautiful Indian girl, the daughter of a chief, threw herself off, in presence of her tribe, some fifty years ago, and dashed herself to pieces, to avoid being married to a man whom her father had decided to be her husband, and whom she would not marry.”
Keating has a story which he tells with all the operatic embellishments indulged in by his guide (I., 280). Reduced to its simplest terms, the tale, as he gives it, is as follows:
In a village of the tribe of Wapasha there lived a girl named Winona. She became attached to a young hunter who wished to marry her, but her parents refused their consent, having intended her for a prominent warrior.
Winona would not listen to the warrior's addresses and told her parents she preferred the hunter, who would always be with her, to the warrior, who would be constantly away on martial exploits. The parents paid no attention to her remonstrances and fixed the day for her wedding to the man of their choice. While all were busy with the preparations, she climbed the rock overhanging the river. Having reached the summit, she made a speech full of reproaches to her family, and then sang her dirge. The wind wafted her words and song to her family, who had rushed to the foot of the rock.
They implored her to come down, promising at last that she should not be forced to marry. Some tried to climb the rock, but before they could reach her she threw herself down the precipice and fell a corpse at the feet of her friends.
Mrs. Eastman also relates the story of Winona's leap (65-70). ”The incident is well known,” she writes. ”Almost everyone has read it a dozen times, _and always differently told_.” It is needless to say that a story told in a dozen different ways and embellished by half-breed guides and white collectors of legends has no value as scientific evidence.[235] But even if we grant that the incidents happened just as related, there is nothing to indicate the presence of exalted sentiments. The girl preferred the hunter because he would be more frequently with her than the warrior (one of the versions says she wanted to wed ”the successful hunter”)[236]--which leaves us in doubt as to the utilitarian or sentimental quality of her attachment.
Apparently she was not very eager to marry the hunter, for had she been, why did she refuse to live when they told her she would not be forced to marry the warrior? But the most important consideration is that she did not commit suicide for _love_ at all, but from _aversion_--to escape being married to a man she disliked. Aversion is usually the motive which leads Indian women to what are called ”suicides for love.” As Griggs remarks (_l.c._):
”Sometimes it happens that a young man wants a girl, and her friends are also quite willing, while she alone is unwilling. The purchase-bundle is desired by her friends, and hence compulsion is resorted to. The girl yields and goes to be his slave, or she holds out stoutly, sometimes taking her own life as the alternative. Several cases of the kind have come to the personal knowledge of the writer.”
Not long ago I read in the Paris _Figaro_ a learned article on suicide in which the a.s.sertion was made that, as is well known, savages never take their own lives. W.W. Westcott, in his otherwise excellent book on suicide, which is based on over a hundred works relating to his subject, makes the same astounding a.s.sertion. I have shown in preceding pages that many Africans and Polynesians commit suicide, and I may now add that Indians seem still more addicted to this idiotic practice. Sometimes, indeed, they have cause for it. I have already cited the words of Belden that suicide is very common among Indian women, and that ”considering the treatment they receive, it is a wonder there is not more of it.” Keating says (II., 172) that ”among the women suicide is far more frequent [than among men], and is the result of jealousy, or of disappointments in love; sometimes extreme grief at the loss of a child will lead to it.” ”Not a season pa.s.ses away,” writes Mrs. Eastman (169),
”but we hear of some Dacotah girl who puts an end to her life in consequence of jealousy, or from the fear of being forced to marry some one she dislikes. A short time ago a very young girl hung herself rather than become the wife of a man who was already the husband of one of her sisters.”
It cannot be denied that in some of these cases (which might be multiplied indefinitely) there is a strong provocation to self-murder.
But as a rule suicide among Indians, as among other savages and barbarians, and among civilized races, is not proof of strong feeling, but of a weak intellect. The Chippewas themselves hold it to be a foolish thing (Keating, II., 168); and among the Indians in general it was usually resorted to for the most trivial causes.
”The very frequent suicides committed [by Creeks] in consequence of the most trifling disappointment or quarrel between men and women are not the result of grief, but of savage and unbounded revenge.”
(Schoolcraft, V., 272.) Krauss (222) found that suicide was frequent among the Alaskan Thlinket Indians. Men sometimes resorted to it when they saw no other way of securing revenge, for a person who causes a suicide is fined and punished as if he were a murderer. One woman cut her throat because a shahman accused her of having by sorcery caused another one's illness. A favorite mode of committing suicide is to go out into the sea, cast away oar and rudder, and deliver themselves to wind and waves. Sometimes they change their mind. A man, whose face had been all scratched up by his angry wife, left home to end his life; but after spending the night with a trader he concluded to go home and make up the quarrel. Mrs. Eastman (48) tells of an old squaw who wanted to hang herself because she was angry with her son; but when, ”after having doubled the strap four times to prevent its breaking, she found herself choking, her courage gave way--she yelled frightfully.” They cut her down and in an hour or two she was quite well again. Another squaw, aged ninety, attempted to hang herself because the men would not allow her to go with a war-party. Her object in wanting to go was to have the pleasure of mutilating the corpses of enemies! Keating says that Sank men sometimes kill themselves because they are envious of the power of others. Neill (85) records the cases of a Dakota wife who hanged herself because her husband had flogged her for hiding his whiskey; of a woman who hanged herself because her son-in-law refused to give her whiskey; of an old woman who flew into a pa.s.sion and committed suicide because her pet granddaughter had been whipped by her father.
If a storm in a tea-kettle is accepted as a true storm, then we may infer from these suicides the existence of deep feeling and profound despair. As a matter of fact, a savage's feelings are no deeper than a tea-kettle, and for that very reason they boil up and overflow more readily than if they were deeper. Loskiel tells us (74-75), that Delaware Indians, both men and women, have committed suicide on discovering that their spouse was unfaithful; these are the same Indians among whom husbands used to abandon their wives when they had babes, and wives their husbands when there were no more presents to receive. Yet even if we admitted such feelings to have been deep, suicide would not prove the existence of genuine affection.
Heckewelder reports instances of Indians who took their own lives because the girls they loved and were engaged to jilted them and married other men. Was the love which led to these suicides mere sensual pa.s.sion or was it refined sentiment, devoted affection? There is nothing to tell us, and the inference from everything we know about Indians is that it was purely sensual. Gibbs, who understood Indian nature thoroughly, took this view when he wrote (198) that among the Indians of Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton ”a strong sensual attachment” not rarely leads young women to destroy themselves on the death of a lover. And the writer who refers in Schoolcraft (V., 272) to the frequent suicides among the Creeks declares that genuine love is unknown to any of them. Had the young men referred to by Heckewelder lost their lives in trying to save the lives of the girls in question, it might be permissible to infer the existence of affection, but no Indian has ever been known to commit such an act. If a savage commits suicide he does it like everything else, for selfish reasons--as an _antidote to distress_--and selfishness is the very negation of love.
The distinguished psychologist, Dr. Maudsley, has well said that
”any poor creature from the gutter can put an end to himself; there is no n.o.bility in the act and no great amount of courage required for it. It is a deed rather of cowardice s.h.i.+rking duty, generated in _a monstrous feeling of self_, and accomplished in the most sinful, because wicked, ignorance.”
In itself, no doubt, a suicide is apt to be extremely ”romantic,”
A complete dime-novel is condensed in a few remarks which Squier makes[237] anent a quaint Nicaraguan custom.
Poor girls, he says, would often get their marriage portion by having amours with several young men. Having collected enough for a ”dowry,”
the girl would a.s.semble all her lovers and ask them to build a house for her and the one she intended to choose for a husband. She then selected the one she liked best, and the others had their pains and their past for their love. Sometimes it happened that one of the discarded lovers committed suicide from grief. In that case the special honor was in store for him of being eaten up by his former rivals and colleagues. The bride also, I presume, partook of the feast--at least after the men had had all they wanted.
LOVE-CHARMS
Indians indulge not only in elopements and suicide, but in the use of love-charms--powders, potions, and incantations. Inasmuch as the distinguished anthropologist Waitz mentions (III., 102) the use of such charms among the things which show that ”genuine romantic love is not rare among Indians,” it behooves us to investigate the matter.
The ancient Peruvians had, according to Tschudi,[238] a special cla.s.s of medicine men whose business it was
”to bring lovers together. For this purpose they prepared talismans made from roots or feathers, which were introduced, secretly if possible, into the clothes or bed of those whose inclination was to be won.