Having thus disposed of elopements, let us examine another phenomenon
which has always been a mainstay of those who would fain make out that
in matters of love there is no difference between us and savages.
Waitz (III., 102) accepts stories of suicide as evidence of genuine
romantic love, and Westermarck follows his example (358, 530), while
Catlin (II., 143) mentions a rock called Lover's Leap,
"from the summit of which, it is said, a beautiful
Indian girl, the daughter of a chief, threw herself
off, in presence of her tribe, some fifty years ago,
and dashed herself to pieces, to avoid being married to
a man whom her father had decided to be her husband,
and whom she would not marry."
Keating has a story which he tells with all the operatic
embellishments indulged in by his guide (I., 280). Reduced to its
simplest terms, the tale, as he gives it, is as follows:
In a village of the tribe of Wapasha there lived a girl
named Winona. She became attached to a young hunter who
wished to marry her, but her parents refused their
consent, having intended her for a prominent warrior.
Winona would not listen to the warrior's addresses and
told her parents she preferred the hunter, who would
always be with her, to the warrior, who would be
constantly away on martial exploits. The parents paid
no attention to her remonstrances and fixed the day for
her wedding to the man of their choice. While all were
busy with the preparations, she climbed the rock
overhanging the river. Having reached the summit, she
made a speech full of reproaches to her family, and
then sang her dirge. The wind wafted her words and song
to her family, who had rushed to the foot of the rock.
They implored her to come down, promising at last that
she should not be forced to marry. Some tried to climb
the rock, but before they could reach her she threw
herself down the precipice and fell a corpse at the
feet of her friends.
Mrs. Eastman also relates the story of Winona's leap (65-70). "The
incident is well known," she writes. "Almost everyone has read it a
dozen times, _and always differently told_." It is needless to say
that a story told in a dozen different ways and embellished by
half-breed guides and white collectors of legends has no value as
scientific evidence.[235] But even if we grant that the incidents
happened just as related, there is nothing to indicate the presence of
exalted sentiments. The girl preferred the hunter because he would be
more frequently with her than the warrior (one of the versions says
she wanted to wed "the successful hunter")[236]--which leaves us in
doubt as to the utilitarian or sentimental quality of her attachment.
Apparently she was not very eager to marry the hunter, for had she
been, why did she refuse to live when they told her she would not be
forced to marry the warrior? But the most important consideration is
that she did not commit suicide for _love_ at all, but from
_aversion_--to escape being married to a man she disliked. Aversion is
usually the motive which leads Indian women to what are called
"suicides for love." As Griggs remarks (_l.c._):
"Sometimes it happens that a young man wants a girl,
and her friends are also quite willing, while she alone
is unwilling. The purchase-bundle is desired by her
friends, and hence compulsion is resorted to. The girl
yields and goes to be his slave, or she holds out
stoutly, sometimes taking her own life as the
alternative. Several cases of the kind have come to the
personal knowledge of the writer."
Not long ago I read in the Paris _Figaro_ a learned article on suicide
in which the assertion was made that, as is well known, savages never
take their own lives. W.W. Westcott, in his otherwise excellent book
on suicide, which is based on over a hundred works relating to his
subject, makes the same astounding assertion. I have shown in
preceding pages that many Africans and Polynesians commit suicide, and
I may now add that Indians seem still more addicted to this idiotic
practice. Sometimes, indeed, they have cause for it. I have already
cited the words of Belden that suicide is very common among Indian
women, and that "considering the treatment they receive, it is a
wonder there is not more of it." Keating says (II., 172) that "among
the women suicide is far more frequent [than among men], and is the
result of jealousy, or of disappointments in love; sometimes extreme
grief at the loss of a child will lead to it." "Not a season passes
away," writes Mrs. Eastman (169),
"but we hear of some Dacotah girl who puts an end to
her life in consequence of jealousy, or from the fear
of being forced to marry some one she dislikes. A short
time ago a very young girl hung herself rather than
become the wife of a man who was already the husband of
one of her sisters."
It cannot be denied that in some of these cases (which might be
multiplied indefinitely) there is a strong provocation to self-murder.
But as a rule suicide among Indians, as among other savages and
barbarians, and among civilized races, is not proof of strong feeling,
but of a weak intellect. The Chippewas themselves hold it to be a
foolish thing (Keating, II., 168); and among the Indians in general it
was usually resorted to for the most trivial causes.
"The very frequent suicides committed [by Creeks] in
consequence of the most trifling disappointment or
quarrel between men and women are not the result of
grief, but of savage and unbounded revenge."
(Schoolcraft, V., 272.) Krauss (222) found that suicide was frequent
among the Alaskan Thlinket Indians. Men sometimes resorted to it when
they saw no other way of securing revenge, for a person who causes a
suicide is fined and punished as if he were a murderer. One woman cut
her throat because a shahman accused her of having by sorcery caused
another one's illness. A favorite mode of committing suicide is to go
out into the sea, cast away oar and rudder, and deliver themselves to
wind and waves. Sometimes they change their mind. A man, whose face
had been all scratched up by his angry wife, left home to end his
life; but after spending the night with a trader he concluded to go
home and make up the quarrel. Mrs. Eastman (48) tells of an old squaw
who wanted to hang herself because she was angry with her son; but
when, "after having doubled the strap four times to prevent its
breaking, she found herself choking, her courage gave way--she yelled
frightfully." They cut her down and in an hour or two she was quite
well again. Another squaw, aged ninety, attempted to hang herself
because the men would not allow her to go with a war-party. Her object
in wanting to go was to have the pleasure of mutilating the corpses of
enemies! Keating says that Sank men sometimes kill themselves because
they are envious of the power of others. Neill (85) records the cases
of a Dakota wife who hanged herself because her husband had flogged
her for hiding his whiskey; of a woman who hanged herself because her
son-in-law refused to give her whiskey; of an old woman who flew into
a passion and committed suicide because her pet granddaughter had been
whipped by her father.
If a storm in a tea-kettle is accepted as a true storm, then we may
infer from these suicides the existence of deep feeling and profound
despair. As a matter of fact, a savage's feelings are no deeper than a
tea-kettle, and for that very reason they boil up and overflow more
readily than if they were deeper. Loskiel tells us (74-75), that
Delaware Indians, both men and women, have committed suicide on
discovering that their spouse was unfaithful; these are the same
Indians among whom husbands used to abandon their wives when they had
babes, and wives their husbands when there were no more presents to
receive. Yet even if we admitted such feelings to have been deep,
suicide would not prove the existence of genuine affection.
Heckewelder reports instances of Indians who took their own lives
because the girls they loved and were engaged to jilted them and
married other men. Was the love which led to these suicides mere
sensual passion or was it refined sentiment, devoted affection? There
is nothing to tell us, and the inference from everything we know about
Indians is that it was purely sensual. Gibbs, who understood Indian
nature thoroughly, took this view when he wrote (198) that among the
Indians of Oregon and Washington "a strong sensual attachment" not
rarely leads young women to destroy themselves on the death of a
lover. And the writer who refers in Schoolcraft (V., 272) to the
frequent suicides among the Creeks declares that genuine love is
unknown to any of them. Had the young men referred to by Heckewelder
lost their lives in trying to save the lives of the girls in question,
it might be permissible to infer the existence of affection, but no
Indian has ever been known to commit such an act. If a savage commits
suicide he does it like everything else, for selfish reasons--as an
_antidote to distress_--and selfishness is the very negation of love.
The distinguished psychologist, Dr. Maudsley, has well said that
"any poor creature from the gutter can put an end to
himself; there is no nobility in the act and no great
amount of courage required for it. It is a deed rather
of cowardice shirking duty, generated in _a monstrous
feeling of self_, and accomplished in the most sinful,
because wicked, ignorance."
In itself, no doubt, a suicide is apt to be extremely "romantic,"
A complete dime-novel is condensed in a few remarks which Squier
makes[237] anent a quaint Nicaraguan custom.
Poor girls, he says, would often get their marriage portion by having
amours with several young men. Having collected enough for a "dowry,"
the girl would assemble all her lovers and ask them to build a house
for her and the one she intended to choose for a husband. She then
selected the one she liked best, and the others had their pains and
their past for their love. Sometimes it happened that one of the
discarded lovers committed suicide from grief. In that case the
special honor was in store for him of being eaten up by his former
rivals and colleagues. The bride also, I presume, partook of the
feast--at least after the men had had all they wanted.