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 (209):
"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 (235) 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]
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."
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.