________________________________________________
_ As it is not customary for an Indian to call at the lodge where a girl lives, about the only chance an Omaha has to woo is at the creek where the girl fetches water, as in the above idyl. Hence courting is always done in secret, the girls never telling the elders, though they may compare notes with each other.
"Generally an honorable courtship ends in a more
or less speedy elopement and marriage, but there
are men and women who prefer dalliance, and it is
this class that furnishes the heroes and heroines
of the Wa-oo-wa-an."
These Wa-oo-wa-an, or woman songs, are a sort of ballad relating the experiences of young men and women. "They are sung by young men when in each other's company, and are seldom overheard by women, almost never by women of high character;" they "belong to that season in a man's career when 'wild oats' are said to be sown." Some of them are vulgar, others humorous.
"They are in no sense love-songs, they have nothing to
do with courtship, and are reserved for the exclusive
audience of men." "The true love-song, called by the
Omahas Bethae wa-an ... is sung generally in the early
morning, when the lover is keeping his tryst and
watching for the maiden to emerge from the tent and go
to the spring. They belong to the secret courtship, and
are sometimes called Me-the-g'thun wa-an--courting
songs." "The few words in these songs convey the one
poetic sentiment: 'With the day I come to you;' or
'Behold me as the day dawns.' Few unprejudiced
listeners," the writer adds, "will fail to recognize in
the Bethae wa-an, or love-songs, the emotion and the
sentiment that prompts a man to woo the woman of his
choice."
Miss Fletcher is easily satisfied. For my part I cannot see in a tune, however rapturously sung or fluted, or in the words "with the day I come to you" and the like any sign of real sentiment or the faintest symptom differentiating the two kinds of love. Moreover, as Miss Fletcher herself remarks:
"The Omahas as a tribe have ceased to exist. The young
men and women are being educated in English speech, and
imbued with English thought; their directive emotion
will hereafter take the lines of our artistic forms."
Even if traces of sexual sentiment were to be found among Indians like the Ornahas, who have been subjected for some generations to civilizing influences, they would allow no inference as to the love-affairs of the real, wild Indian.
Miss Fletcher makes the same error as Professor Fillmore, who assisted her in writing _A Study of Omaha Indian Music_. He took the wild Indian tunes and harnessed them to modern German harmonies--a procedure as unscientific as it would be unhistoric to make Cicero record his speeches in a phonograph. Miss Fletcher takes simple Indian songs and reads into them the feelings of a New York or Boston woman. The following is an instance. A girl sings to a warrior (I give only Miss Fletcher's translation, omitting the Indian words): "War; when you returned; die; you caused me; go when you did; God; I appealed; standing," This literal version our author explains and translates freely, as follows:
"No. 82 is the confession of a woman to the man she
loves, that he had conquered her heart before he had
achieved a valorous reputation. The song opens upon the
scene. The warrior had returned victorious and passed
through the rites of the Tent of War, so he is entitled
to wear his honors publicly; the woman tells him how,
when he started on the war-path, she went up on the
hill and standing there cried to Wa-kan-da to grant him
success. He who had now won that success had even then
vanquished her heart, 'had caused her to die' to all
else but the thought of him"(!)
Another instance of this emotional embroidery may be found on pages 15-17 of the same treatise. What makes this procedure the more inexplicable is that both these songs are classed by Miss Fletcher among the Wa-oo-wa-an or "woman songs," concerning which she has told us that "they are in no sense love-songs," and that usually they are not even the effusions of a woman's own feelings, but the compositions of frivolous and vain young men put into the mouth of wanton women. The honorable secret courtships were never talked of or sung about.
Regarding the musical and poetic features of Dakota courtship, S.R. Riggs has this to say:
"A boy begins to feel the drawing of the other sex and,
like the ancient Roman boys, he exercises his ingenuity
in making a 'cotanke,' or rude pipe, from the bone of a
swan's wing, or from some species of wood, and with
that he begins to call to his lady-love, on the night
air. Having gained attention by his flute, he may sing
this:
Stealthily, secretly, see me,
Stealthily, secretly, see me,
Stealthily, secretly, see me,
Lo! thee I tenderly regard;
Stealthily, secretly, see me."
Or he may commend his good qualities as a hunter by singing this song:
Cling fast to me, and you'll ever have plenty,
Cling fast to me, and you'll ever have plenty,
Cling fast to me...."
"A Dacota girl soon learns to adorn her fingers with rings, her ears with tin dangles, her neck with beads. Perhaps an admirer gives her a ring, singing:
Wear this, I say;
Wear this, I say;
Wear this, I say;
This little finger ring,
Wear this, I say."
For traces of real amorous sentiment one would naturally look to the poems of the semi-civilized Mexicans and Peruvians of the South rather than to the savage and barbarous Indians of the North. Dr. Brinton (_E. of A_., 297) has found the Mexican songs the most delicate. He quotes two Aztec love-poems, the first being from the lips of an Indian girl:
I know not whether thou hast been absent:
I lie down with thee, I rise up with thee,
In my dreams thou art with me.
If my ear-drop trembles in my ears,
I know it is thou moving within my heart.
The second, from the same language, is thus rendered:
On a certain mountain side,
Where they pluck flowers,
I saw a pretty maiden,
Who plucked from me my heart,
Whither thou goest,
There go I.
Dr. Brinton also quotes the following poem of the Northern Kioways as "a song of true love in the ordinary sense:"
I sat and wept on the hillside,
I wept till the darkness fell;
I wept for a maiden afar off,
A maiden who loves me well.
The moons are passing, and some moon,
I shall see my home long-lost,
And of all the greetings that meet me,
My maiden's will gladden me most.
"The poetry of the Indians is the poetry of naked thought. They have neither rhyme nor metre to adorn it," says Schoolcraft (_Oneota,_ 14). The preceding poem has both; what guarantee is there that the translator has not embellished the substance of it as he did its form? Yet, granting he did not embroider the substance, we know that weeping and longing for an absent one are symptoms of sensual as well as of sentimental love, and cannot, therefore, be accepted as a criterion. As for the Mexican and other poems cited, they give evidence of a desire to be near the beloved, and of the all-absorbing power of passion (monopoly) which likewise are characteristic of both kinds of love. Of the true criteria of love, the altruistic sentiments of gallantry, self-sacrifice, sympathy, adoration, there is no sign in any of these poems. Dr. Brinton admits, too, that such poems as the above are rare among the North American Indians anywhere.
"Most of their chants in relation to the other sex are
erotic, not emotional; and this holds equally true of
those which in some tribes on certain occasions are
addressed by the women to the men."
Powers says that the Wintun of California have a special dance and celebration when a girl reaches the age of puberty. The songs sung on this occasion "sometimes are grossly licentious." Evidences of this sort might be supplied by the page.[245]
-----
[FOOTNOTE 245: Dr. Brinton published in 1886 an interesting pamphlet entitled _The Conception of Love in Some American Languages_, which was afterward reprinted in his _Essays of an Americanist_. It forms the philological basis for his assertion, already quoted, that the languages of the Algonquins of North America, the Nahuas of Mexico, the Mayas of Yucatan, the Quichas of Peru, and the Tupis and Guaranis of Brazil "supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them." I have read this learned paper half a dozen times, and have come to the conclusion that it proves exactly the contrary.
I. In the Algonkin, as I gather from the professor's explanations, there is one form of the word "love" from which are derived the expressions "to tie," "to fasten," "and also some of the coarsest words to express the sexual relation." For the feebler "sentiment" of merely liking a person there is a word meaning "he or it _seems good to me_." Expressions relating to the highest form of love, "that which embraces all men and all beings" are derived from a root indicative of "_what gives joy_." The italics are mine. I can find here no indication of altruistic sentiment, but quite the reverse.
II. It was among the Mexicans that Dr. Brinton found the "delicate" poems. Yet he informs us that they had "only one word...to express every variety of love, human and divine, carnal and chaste, between men and between the sexes." This being the case, how are we ever to know which kind of love a Mexican poem refers to? Dr. Brinton himself feels that one must not credit the Aztecs "with finer feelings than they deserve;" and with reference to a certain mythic conception he adds, "I gravely doubt that they felt the shafts of the tender passion, with any such susceptibility as to employ this metaphor." Moreover, as he informs us, the Mexican root of the word is not derived from the primary meaning of the root, but from a secondary and later signification. "This hints ominously," he says,
"at the probability that the ancient tongue had for
a long time no word at all to express this, the highest
and noblest emotion of the human heart, and that
consequently this emotion itself had not risen to
consciousness in the national mind."
In its later development the capacity of the language for emotional expression was greatly enlarged. Was this before the European missionaries appeared on the scene? Missionaries, it is important to remember, had a good deal to do with the development of the language, as well as the birth of the nobler conceptions and emotions among the lower races. Many fatal blunders in comparative psychology and sociology can be traced to the ignoring of this fact.
III. Dr. Otto Stoll, in his work _Zur Ethnographie der Rep. Guatemala,_ declares that the Cakchiquel Indians of that country "are strangers to the mere conception of that kind of love which is expressed by the Latin verb _amare_." _Logoh_, the Guatemalan word for love, also means "to buy," and according to Stoll the only other word in the pure original tongue for the passion of love is _ah_, to want, to desire. Dr. Brinton finds it used also in the sense of "to like," "to love" [in what way?]. But the best he can do is to "think that 'to buy' and 'to love' may be construed as developments of the same idea of _prizing highly_" which tells us nothing regarding altruism. All that we know about the customs of Guatemalans points to the conclusion that Dr. Stoll was right in declaring that they had no notion of true love.
IV. Of the Peruvian expressions relating to love in the comprehensive sense of the word, Dr. Brinton specifies five. Of one of them, _munay_, there were, according to Dr. Anchorena, nearly six hundred combinations. It meant originally "merely a sense of want, an appetite, and the accompanying desire to satisfy it." In songs composed in the nineteenth century _cenyay_, which originally meant pity, is preferred to _munay_ as the most appropriate term for the love between the sexes. The blind, unreasoning, absorbing passion is expressed by _huaylluni_, which is nearly always confined to sexual love, and "conveys the idea of the sentiment showing itself in action by those sweet signs and marks of devotion which are so highly prized by the loving heart." The verb _lluyllny_ (literally to be soft or tender, as fruit) means to
"love with tenderness, to have as a darling, to
caress lovingly. It has less of sexuality in it
than the word last mentioned, and is applied by
girls to each other and as a term of family fondness."
There was also a term, _mayhuay_, referring to words of tenderness or acts of endearment which may be merely simulated signs of emotion. I cannot find in any of these definitions evidence of altruistic affection, unless it be in the "marks of devotion," which expression, however, I suspect, is Philadelphian rather than Peruvian.
V. The Tupi-Guarani have one word only to express all the varieties of love known to them--_aihu_. Dr. Brinton thinks he "cannot be far wrong" in deriving this from _ai_, self, or the same, and _hu_ to find or be present; and from this he infers that "to love," in Guarani, means "to find oneself in another," or "to discover in another a likeness to oneself." I submit that this is altogether too airy a fabric of fanciful conjecture to allow the inference that the sentiment of love was known to these Brazilian Indians, whose morals and customs were, moreover, as we have seen, fatal obstacles to the growth of refined sexual feeling. Both the Tupis and Guaranis were cannibals, and they had no regard for chastity. One of their "sentimental" customs was for a captor to make his prisoner, before he was eaten, cohabit with his (the captor's) sister or daughter, the offspring of this union being allowed to grow up and then was devoured too, the first mouthful being given to the mother. (Southey, I., 218.) I mention this because Dr. Brinton says that the evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among these tribes "is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life."]
-----
An interesting collection of erotic songs sung by the Klamath Indians of Southern Oregon has been made by A.S. Gatschet.[246] "With the Indians," he says,
"all these and many other erotic songs pass under
the name of puberty songs. They include lines on
courting, love-sentiments, disappointments in love,
marriage fees paid to the parents, on marrying
and on conjugal life."
[FOOTNOTE 246: _U.S. Geogr. and Geol Survey Rocky Mt. Region_, Pt. I., 181-89.]
From this collection I will cite those that are pertinent to our inquiry. Observe that usually it is the girl that sings or does the courting.
1. I have passed into womanhood.
3. Who comes there riding toward me?
4. My little pigeon, fly right into the dovecot!
5. This way follow me before it is full daylight.
9. I want to wed you for you are a chief's son.
7. Very much I covet you as a husband, for in times to come you will live in affluence.
8. She: And when will you pay for me a wedding gift? He: A canoe I'll give for you half filled with water.
9. He spends much money on women, thinking to obtain them easily.
11. It is not that black fellow that I am striving to secure.
14. That is a pretty female that follows me up.
16. That's because you love me that rattle around the lodge.
27. Why have you become so estranged to me?
37. I hold you to be an innocent girl, though I have not lived with you yet.
38. Over and over they tell me. That this scoundrel has insulted me.
52. Young chaps tramp around; they are on the lookout for women.
54. Girls: Young man, I will not love you, for you run around with no blanket on; I do not desire such a husband. Boys: And I do not like a frog-shaped woman with swollen eyes.[247]
[FOOTNOTE 247: It is of the Modocs of this region that Joaquin Miller wrote that "Indians have their loves, and as they have but little else, these fill up most of their lives." The above poems indicate the quality of this Indian love. In Joaquin Miller's narrative of his experience with the Modocs, the account of his own marriage is of special interest. At a Modoc marriage a feast is given by the girl's father, "to which all are invited, but the bride and bridegroom do not partake of food. ... Late in the fall, the old chief made the marriage feast, and at that feast neither I nor his daughter took meat, or any part." It is a pity that the rest of this writer's story is, by his own confession, part romance, part reality. A lifelike description of his Modoc experience would have done more to ensure immortality for his book than any amount of romancing.]
Most of these poems, as I have said, were composed and sung by women. The same is true of a collection of Chinook songs (Northern Oregon and adjacent country) made by Dr. Boas.[248] The majority of his poems, he says, "are songs of love and jealousy, such as are made by Indian women living in the cities, or by rejected lovers." These songs are rather pointless, and do not tell us much about the subject of our inquiry. Here are a few samples:
1. Yaya,
When you take a wife,
Yaya,
Don't become angry with me.
I do not care.
2. Where is Charlie going now?
Where is Charlie going now?
He comes back to see me,
I think.
3. Good-by, oh, my dear Charlie!
When you take a wife
Don't forget me.
4. I don't know how I feel
Toward Johnny.
That young man makes a foe of me.
5. My dear Annie,
If you cast off Jimmy Star,
Do not forget
How much he likes
You.
[FOOTNOTE 248: _Journal of Amer. Folklore_, 1888, 220-26.]
Of much greater interest are the "Songs of the Kwakiutl Indians," of Vancouver Island, collected by Dr. Boas.[249] One of them is too obscene to quote. The following lines evidence a pretty poetic fancy, suggesting New Zealand poetry:
1. Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could----and make my true love happy,
haigia, hay[=i]a.
Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could arise from under the ground right
next to my true love, haigia hay[=i]a.
Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could alight from the heights, from the
heights of the air right next to my true love, haigia,
hay[=i]a.
Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could sit among the clouds and fly with
them to my true love.
Y[=i]! Yawa, I am downcast on account of my true love.
Y[=i]! Yawa, I cry for pain on account of my true love, my dear.
[FOOTNOTE 249: _Internat. Archiv. fur Ethnogr., Supplement zu Bd._ IX. 1896, pp. 1-6.]
Dr. Boas confesses that this song is somewhat freely translated. The more's the pity. An expression like "my true love," surely is utterly un-Indian.
2.
An[=a]ma! Indeed my strong-hearted, my dear.
An[=a]ma! Indeed, my strong hearted, my dear.
An[=a]ma! Indeed my truth toward my dear.
Not pretend I I know having master my dear.
Not pretend I I know for whom I am gathering property, my dear.
Not pretend I I know for whom I am gathering blankets, my dear.
3.
Like pain of fire runs down my body my love to you, my dear!
Like pain runs down my body my love to you, my dear.
Just as sickness is my love to you, my dear.
Just as a boil pains me my love to you, my dear.
Just as a fire burns me my love to you, my dear.
I am thinking of what you said to me
I am thinking of the love you bear me.
I am afraid of your love, my dear.
O pain! O pain!
Oh, where is my true love going, my dear?
Oh, they say she will be taken away far from here. She will leave me, my true love, my dear.
My body feels numb on account of what I have said, my true love, my dear.
Good-by, my true love, my dear.[250]
[FOOTNOTE 250: These lines by their fervid eroticism quite suggest the existence of a masculine Indian Sappho. See the comments on Sappho in the chapter on Greek love.] _
Read next: More Love-Stories
Read previous: Music In Indian Courtship
Table of content of How American Indians Love
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
