A few of the tales I have cited are not marred by superadded
sentimental adornments, but all of them are open to suspicion from
still another point of view. They are invariably so proper and pure
that they might be read to Sunday-school classes. Since one-half of
Schoolcraft's assistants in the compilation of this material were
women, this might have been expected, and if the collection had been
issued as a Fairy Book it would have been a matter of course. But they
were issued as accurate "oral legends" of wild Indians, and from the
point of view of the student of the history of love the most important
question to ask was, "Are Indian stories in reality as pure and
refined in tone as these specimens would lead us to suspect?" I will
answer that question by citing the words of one of the warmest
champions of the Indians, the eminent American anthropologist,
Professor D.G. Brinton _(M.N.W., 160):
"Anyone who has listened to Indian tales, not as they
are recorded in books, but as they are told by the
camp-fire, will bear witness to the abounding obscenity
they deal in. That the same vulgarity shows itself in
their arts and life, no genuine observer need doubt."
And in a footnote he gives this extremely interesting information:
"The late George Gibbs will be acknowledged as an
authority here. He was at the time of his death
preparing a Latin translation of the tales he had
collected, as they were too erotic to print in English.
He wrote me, 'Schoolcraft's legends are emasculated to
a degree that they become no longer Indian.'"
No longer Indian, indeed! And these doctored stories, artfully
sentimentalized at one end and expurgated at the other, are advanced
as proofs that a savage Indian's love is just as refined as that of a
civilized Christian! What Indian stories really are, the reader, if he
can stomach such things, may find out for himself by consulting the
marvellously copious and almost phonographically accurate collection
of native tales which another of our most eminent anthropologists, Dr.
Franz Boas, has printed.[200] And it must be borne in mind that these
stories are not the secret gossip of vulgar men alone by themselves,
but are national tales with which children of both sexes become
familiar from their earliest years. As Colonel Dodge remarks (213): it
is customary for as many as a dozen persons of both sexes to live in
one room, hence there is an entire lack of privacy, either in word or
act. "It is a wonder," says Powers (271), "that children grow up with
any virtue whatever, for the conversation of their elders in their
presence is often of the filthiest description." "One thing seems to
me more than intolerable," wrote the French missionary Le Jeune in
1632 (_Jesuit Relations_, V., 169).
"It is their living together promiscuously, girls,
women, men, and boys, in a smoky hole. And the more
progress one makes in the knowledge of the language,
the more vile things one hears.... I did not think that
the mouth of the savage was so foul as I notice it is
every day."
Elsewhere (VI., 263) the same missionary says:
"Their lips are constantly foul with these obscenities;
and it is the same with the little children.... The
older women go almost naked, the girls and young women
are _very modestly clad_; but, among themselves, their
language has the foul odor of the sewers."
Of the Pennsylvania Indians Colonel James Smith (who had lived among
them as a captive) wrote (140): "The squaws are generally very
immodest in their words and actions, and will often put the young men
to the blush."