"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]