HOW AMERICAN INDIANS LOVE

“On the subject of love no persons have been less understood than the Indians,” wrote Thomas Ashe in 1806 (271).

“It is said of them that they have no affection, and that the intercourse of the sexes is sustained by a brutal passion remote from tenderness and sensibility.  This is one of the many gross errors which have been propagated to calumniate these innocent people.”

Waitz remarks (III., 102): 

“How much alike human nature is everywhere is evinced by the remarkable circumstance that notwithstanding the degradation of woman, cases of romantic love are not even very rare”

among Indians.  “Their languages,” writes Professor Brinton (R.P., 54),

“supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them, and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life....  Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a capability for romantic love such as would do credit to a modern novel.  This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian races this ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of passion being something foreign to those varieties of man.”

The Indians, says Catlin (N.A.I., I., 121), “are not in the least behind us in conjugal, in filial, and in paternal affection.”  In the preface to Mrs. Eastman’s Life and Legend of the Sioux, Mrs. Kirkman exclaims that

“in spite of all that renders gross and mechanical their ordinary mode of marrying and giving in marriage, instances are not rare among them of love as true, as fiery, and as fatal as that of the most exalted hero of romance.”

Let us listen to a few of the tales of Indian love, as recorded by Schoolcraft.[195]

THE RED LOVER

Many years ago there lived a Chippewa warrior on the banks of Lake Superior.  His name was Wawanosh and he was renowed for his ancestry and personal bravery.  He had an only daughter, eighteen years old, celebrated for her gentle virtues, her slender form, her full beaming hazel eyes, and her dark and flowing hair.  Her hand was sought by a young man of humble parentage, but a tall commanding form, a manly step, and an eye beaming with the tropical fires of love and youth.  These were sufficient to attract the favorable notice of the daughter, but did not satisfy the father, who sternly informed the young man that before he could hope to mingle his humble blood with that of so renowned a warrior he would have to go and make a name for himself by enduring fatigue in the campaigns against enemies, by taking scalps, and proving himself a successful hunter.