Part 66 (1/2)
”no Indian who was not an accomplished rogue--particularly in the horse-stealing line--an expert hunter, able to provide plenty of meat and grease, was fit to have a wife on any conditions.”
One day a suitor appeared for the hand of the chief's own daughter, a quasi-widow, but the chief repulsed him because he had no horses. As a last resort the suitor appealed to the young woman herself, promising, if she favored him, that he would give her plenty of grease. This grease argument she was unable to resist, so she entreated her father to give his consent. At this he broke out in a towering pa.s.sion, threw cradle and other chattels out of the door and ordered her to follow at once. The girl's mother now interceded, whereupon ”seizing her by the hair, he hurled her violently to the ground and beat her with his clenched fists till I thought he would break every bone in her body.”
The next morning, however, he went to the lodge of the newly married couple, made up, and they returned, bag and baggage, to his tent.
Grease appears to play a role in the courts.h.i.+p of northern Indians too. Leland relates (40) that the Algonquins make sausages from the entrails of bears by simply turning them inside out, the fat which clings to the outside of the entrails filling them when they are thus turned. These sausages, dried and smoked, are considered a great delicacy. The girls show their love by casting a string of them round the neck of the favored youth.
PANTOMIMIC LOVE-MAKING
It is noticeable in the foregoing accounts that courts.h.i.+p and even proposal are apt to be by pantomime, without any spoken words. The young Piute who visits his girl while she is in bed with her grandmother ”does not speak to her.” The Nis.h.i.+nam hunter leaves his presents and they are accepted ”without a word being spoken;” and the Apaches, as we saw, ”pop the question” with stones or ponies. Why this silent courts.h.i.+p? Obviously because the Indian is not used to playing so humble a role as that of suitor to so inferior a being as a woman.
He feels awkward, and has nothing to say. As Burton has remarked _(C.S._, 144), ”in savage and semi-barbarous societies the separation of the s.e.xes is the general rule, because, as they have no ideas in common, each prefers the society of its own.” ”Between the s.e.xes,”
wrote Morgan (322)
”there was but little sociality, as this term is understood in polished society. Such a thing as formal visiting was entirely unknown. When the unmarried of opposite s.e.xes were casually brought together there was little or no conversation between them. No attempts by the unmarried to please or gratify each other by acts of personal attention were ever made. At the season of councils and religious festivals there was more of actual intercourse and sociality than at any other time; but this was confined to the dance and was in itself limited.”
HONEYMOON
It is needless to say that where there is no mental intercourse there can be no choice and union of souls, but only of bodies; that is, there can be no sentimental love. The honeymoon, where there is one,[242] is in this respect no better than the period of courts.h.i.+p.
Parkman gives this realistic sketch from life among the Ogallalla Indians (_O.T._, ch. XI.):
”The happy pair had just entered upon the honeymoon.
They would stretch a buffalo robe upon poles, so as to protect them from the fierce rays of the sun, and, spreading beneath this rough canopy a luxuriant couch of furs, would sit affectionately side by side for half a day, though I could not discover that much conversation pa.s.sed between them. Probably they had nothing to say; for an Indian's supply of topics is far from being copious.”
MUSIC IN INDIAN COURTs.h.i.+P
Inasmuch as music is said to begin where words end, we might expect it to play a role in the taciturn courts.h.i.+p of Indians. One of the maidens described by Mrs. Eastman (85) ”had many lovers, who wore themselves out playing the flute, to as little purpose as they braided their hair and painted their faces,” Gila Indians court and pop the question with their flutes, according to the description by Bancroft (I., 549):
”When a young man sees a girl whom he desires for a wife he first endeavors to gain the good-will of the parents; this accomplished, he proceeds to serenade his lady-love, and will often sit for hours, day after day, near her house playing on his flute. Should the girl not appear, it is a sign that she rejects him; but if, on the other hand, she comes out to meet him, he knows that his suit is accepted, and he takes her to his house. No marriage ceremony is performed.”
In Chili, among the Araucanians, every lover carries with him an amatory Jew's-harp, which is played almost entirely by inhaling.
According to Smith
”they have ways of expressing various emotions by different modes of playing, all of which the Araucanian damsels seem fully to appreciate, although I must confess that I could not.
”The lover usually seats himself at a distance from the object of his pa.s.sion, and gives vent to his feeling in doleful sounds, indicating the maiden of his choice by slyly gesturing, winking, and rolling his eyes toward her. This style of courts.h.i.+p is certainly sentimental and might be recommended to some more civilized lovers who always lose the use of their tongues at the very time it is most needed.”
”Sentimental” in one sense of the word, but not in the sense in which it is used in this book. There is nothing in winking, rolling the eyes, and playing the Jew's-harp, either by inhalation or exhalation, to indicate whether the youth's feelings toward the girl are refined, sympathetic, and devoted, or whether he merely longs for an amorous intrigue. That these Indian lovers _may_ convey definite _ideas_ to the minds of the girls is quite possible. Even birds have their love-calls, and savages in all parts of the world use ”leading motives” _a la_ Wagner, i.e., musical phrases with a definite meaning.[243]
Chippewayan medicine men make use of music-boards adorned with drawings which recall special magic formulae to their minds. On one of these (Schoolcraft, V., 648) there is the figure of a young man in the frenzy of love. His head is adorned with feathers, and he has a drum in hand which he beats while crying to his absent love: ”Hear my drum!
Though you be at the uttermost parts of the earth, hear my drum!”
”The flageolet is the musical instrument of young men and is princ.i.p.ally used in love-affairs to attract the attention of the maiden and reveal the presence of the lover,” says Miss Alice Fletcher, who has written some entertaining and valuable treatises on Indian music and love-songs.[244] Mirrors, too, are used to attract the attention of girls, as appears from a charming idyl sketched by Miss Fletcher, which I will reproduce here, somewhat condensed.
One day, while dwelling with the Omahas, Miss Fletcher was wandering in quest of spring flowers near a creek when she was arrested by a sudden flash of light among the branches. ”Some young man is near,” she thought, ”signalling with his mirror to a friend or sweetheart.”
She had hardly seen a young fellow who did not carry a looking-gla.s.s dangling at his side. The flas.h.i.+ng signal was soon followed by the wild cadences of a flute. In a few moments the girls came in sight, with merry faces, chatting gayly. Each one carried a bucket. Down the hill, on the other side of the brook, advanced two young men, their gay blankets hanging from one shoulder. The girls dipped their pails in the stream and turned to leave when one of the young men jumped across the creek and confronted one of the girls, her companion walking away some distance. The lovers stood three feet apart, she with downcast face, he evidently pleading his cause to not unwilling ears. By and by she drew from her belt a package containing a necklace, which she gave to the young man, who took it shyly from her hands. A moment later the girl had joined her friend, and the man recrossed the brook, where he and his friend flung themselves on the gra.s.s and examined the necklace. Then they rose to go. Again the flute was heard gradually dying away in the distance.