Apart from "free translations" and embellishments, the great
difficulty with poems like these, taken down at the present day, is
that one never knows, though they may be told by a pure Indian, how
far they may have been influenced by the half-breeds or the
missionaries who have been with these Indians, in some cases for many
generations. The same is true of not a few of the stories attributed
to Indians.
Powers had heard among other "Indian" tales one of a lover's leap, and
another of a Mono maiden who loved an Awani brave and was imprisoned
by her cruel father in a cave until she perished. "But," says Powers
(368), "neither Choko nor any other Indian could give me any
information touching them, and Choko dismissed them all with the
contemptuous remark, '_White man too much lie_.'" I have shown in this
chapter how large is the number of white men who "too much lie" in
attributing to Indians stories, thoughts, and feelings, which no
Indian ever dreamt of.[251]
The genuine traditional literature of the Indians consists, as Powers
remarks (408), almost entirely of petty fables about animals, and
there is an almost total lack of human legends. Some there are, and a
few of them are quite pretty. Powers relates one (299) which may well
be Indian, the only suspicious feature being the reference to a
"beautiful" cloud (for Indians know only the utility, not the charm,
of nature).
"One day, as the sun was setting, Kiunaddissi's daughter
went out and saw a beautiful red cloud, the most lovely
cloud ever seen, resting like a bar along the horizon,
stretching southward. She cried out to her father, 'O
father, come and see this beautiful [bright?] cloud!' He did
so.... Next day the daughter took a basket and went out into
the plain to gather clover to eat. While picking the clover
she found a very pretty arrow, trimmed with yellow-hammer's
feathers. After gazing at it awhile in wonder she turned to
look at her basket, and there beside it stood a man who was
called Yang-wi'-a-kan-üh (Red Cloud) who was none other than
the cloud she had seen the day before. He was so bright and
resplendent to look upon that she was abashed; she modestly
hung down her head and uttered not a word. But he said to
her, 'I am not a stranger. You saw me last night; you see me
every night when the sun is setting. I love you; you love
me; look at me; be not afraid.' Then she said, 'If you love
me, take and eat this basket of grass-seed pinole.' He
touched the basket and in an instant all the pinole vanished
in the air, going no man knows whither. Thereupon the girl
fell away in a swoon, and lay a considerable time there upon
the ground. But when the man returned to her behold she had
given birth to a son. And the girl was abashed, and would
not look in his face, but she was full of joy because of her
new-born son."
The Indian's anthropomorphic way of looking at nature (instead of the
esthetic or scientific, both of which are as much beyond his mental
capacity as the faculty for sentimental love) is also illustrated by
the following Dakota tale, showing how two girls got married.[252]
"There were two women lying out of doors and looking up to
the shining stars. One of them said to the other, 'I wish
that very large and bright shining star was my husband,' The
other said, 'I wish that star that shines so brightly were
my husband.' Thereupon they both were immediately taken up.
They found themselves in a beautiful country, which was full
of twin flowers. They found that the star which shone most
brightly was a large man, while the other was only a young
man. So they each had a husband, and one became with child."
Fear and superstition are, as we know, among the obstacles which
prevent an Indian from appreciating the beauties of nature. The story
of the Yurok siren, as related by Powers (59), illustrates this point:
"There is a certain tract of country on the north side of
the Klamath River which nothing can induce an Indian to
enter. They say that there is a beautiful squaw living there
whose fascinations are fatal. When an Indian sees her he
straightway falls desperately in love. She decoys him
farther and farther into the forest, until at last she
climbs a tree and the man follows. She now changes into a
panther and kills him; then, resuming her proper form, she
cuts off his head and places it in a basket. She is now,
they say, a thousand years old, and has an Indian's head for
every year of her life."
Such tales as these may well have originated in an Indian's
imagination. Their local color is correct and charming, and they do
not attribute to a savage notions and emotions foreign to his mind and
customs.
"WHITE MAN TOO MUCH LIE"
It is otherwise with a class of Indian tales of which Schoolcraft's
are samples, and a few more of which may here be referred to. With the
unquestioning trust of a child the learned Waitz accepts as a specimen
of genuine romantic love a story[253] of an Indian maiden who, when an
arrow was aimed at her lover's heart, sprang before him and received
the barbed shaft in her own heart; and another of a Creek Indian who
jumped into a cataract with the girl he loved, meeting death with her
when he found he could not escape the tomahawk of the pursuers. The
solid facts of the first story will be hinted at presently in speaking
of Pocahontas; and as for the second story it is, reduced to Indian
realism, simply an incident of an elopement and pursuit such as may
have easily happened, though the motive of the elopement was nothing
more than the usual desire to avoid paying for the girl. Such
sentences as "she loved him with an intensity of passion that only the
noblest souls know," and "they vowed eternal love; they vowed to live
and die with each other," ought to have opened Waitz's eyes to the
fact that he was not reading an actual Indian story, but a story
sentimentalized and embellished in the cheapest modern dime-novel
style. The only thing such stories tell us is that "white man too much
lie."
White woman, too, is not always above suspicion. Mrs. Eastman assures
us that she got her Sioux legends from the Indians themselves. One of
these stories is entitled "The Track Maker" (122-23). During an
interval of peace between the Chippewas and Dakotas, she relates, a
party of Chippewas visited a camp of the Dakotas. A young Dakota
warrior fell in love with a girl included in the Chippewa party.
"_Though he would have died to save her from sorrow_, yet he knew that
she could never be his wife," for the tribes were ever at war. Here
Mrs. Eastman, with the recklessness of a newspaper reporter, puts into
an Indian's head a sentiment which no Indian ever dreamt of. All the
facts cited in this chapter prove this, and, moreover, the sequel of
her own story proves it. After exchanging vows of love (!) with the
Dakotan brave, the girl departed with her Chippewa friends. Shortly
afterward two Dakotas were murdered. The Chippewas were suspected, and
a party of warriors at once broke up in pursuit of the innocent and
unsuspecting party. The girl, whose name was Flying Shadow, saw her
lover among the pursuers, who had already commenced to slaughter and
scalp the other women, though the maidens clasped their hands in a
"vain appeal to the merciless wretches, who see neither beauty nor
grace when rage and revenge are in their hearts." Throwing herself in
his arms she cried, "Save me! save me! Do not let them slay me before
your eyes; make me your prisoner! You said that you loved me, spare my
life!" He did spare her life; he simply touched her with his spear,
then passed on, and a moment later the girl was slain and scalped by
his companions. And why did the gallant and self-sacrificing lover
touch her with his spear before he left her to be murdered? Because
touching an enemy--male or female--with his spear entitles the noble
red man to wear a feather of honor as if he had taken a scalp! Yet he
"would have died to save her from sorrow"!
An Indian's capacity for self-sacrifice is also revealed in a favorite
Blackfoot tale recorded by Grinnell (39-42). A squaw was picking
berries in a place rendered dangerous by the proximity of the enemy.
Suddenly her husband, who was on guard, saw a war party approaching.
Signalling to the squaw, they mounted their horses and took to flight.
The wife's horse, not being a good one, soon tired out and the husband
had to take her on his. But this was too much of a load even for his
powerful animal. The enemy gained on them constantly. Presently he
said to his wife: "Get off. The enemy will not kill you. You are too
young and pretty. Some one of them will take you, and I will get a big
party of our people and rescue you." But the woman cried "No, no, I
will die here with you." "Crazy person," cried the man, and with a
quick jerk he threw the woman off and escaped. Having reached the
lodge safely, he painted himself black and "walked all through the
camp crying." Poor fellow! How he loved his wife! The Indian, as
Catlin truly remarked, "is not in the least behind us in conjugal
affection." The only difference--a trifling one to be sure--is that a
white man, under such circumstances, would have spilt his last drop of
blood in defence of his wife's life and her honor.