INDIAN LOVE-POEMS

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.

1. I have passed into womanhood.

3. Who comes there riding toward me?

4. My little pigeon, fly right into the dovecot!

5. This way follow me before it is full daylight.

9. I want to wed you for you are a chief's son.

7. Very much I covet you as a husband, for in times to come you

will live in affluence.

8. She: And when will you pay for me a wedding gift?

He: A canoe I'll give for you half filled with water.

9. He spends much money on women, thinking to obtain them

easily.

11. It is not that black fellow that I am striving to secure.

14. That is a pretty female that follows me up.

16. That's because you love me that rattle around the lodge.

27. Why have you become so estranged to me?

37. I hold you to be an innocent girl, though I have not lived

with you yet.

38. Over and over they tell me,

That this scoundrel has insulted me.

52. Young chaps tramp around;

They are on the lookout for women.

54. Girls: Young man, I will not love you, for you run around with no blanket on; I do not desire such a husband. Boys: And I do not like a frog-shaped woman with swollen eyes.[247]

Most of these poems, as I have said, were composed and sung by women. The same is true of a collection of Chinook songs (Northern Oregon and adjacent country) made by Dr. Boas.[248] The majority of his poems, he says, "are songs of love and jealousy, such as are made by Indian women living in the cities, or by rejected lovers." These songs are rather pointless, and do not tell us much about the subject of our inquiry. Here are a few samples:

1. Yaya,

When you take a wife,

Yaya,

Don't become angry with me.

I do not care.

2. Where is Charlie going now?

Where is Charlie going now?

He comes back to see me,

I think.

3. Good-by, oh, my dear Charlie!

When you take a wife

Don't forget me.

4. I don't know how I feel

Toward Johnny.

That young man makes a foe of me.

5. My dear Annie,

If you cast off Jimmy Star,

Do not forget

How much he likes

You.

Of much greater interest are the "Songs of the Kwakiutl Indians," of Vancouver Island, collected by Dr. Boas.[249] One of them is too obscene to quote. The following lines evidence a pretty poetic fancy, suggesting New Zealand poetry:

1. Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could——and make my true love happy, haigia, hay[=i]a.

Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could arise from under the ground right

next to my true love, haigia hay[=i]a.

Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could alight from the heights, from the heights of the air right next to my true love, haigia, hay[=i]a.

Y[=i]! Yawa, wish I could sit among the clouds and fly with them to my true love.

Y[=i]! Yawa, I am downcast on account of my true love.

Y[=i]! Yawa, I cry for pain on account of my true love, my dear.

Dr. Boas confesses that this song is somewhat freely translated. The more's the pity. An expression like "my true love," surely is utterly un-Indian.

2. An[=a]ma! Indeed my strong-hearted, my dear.

An[=a]ma! Indeed, my strong hearted, my dear.

An[=a]ma! Indeed my truth toward my dear.

Not pretend I I know having master my dear.

Not pretend I I know for whom I am gathering property, my

dear.

Not pretend I I know for whom I am gathering blankets, my

dear.

3. Like pain of fire runs down my body my love to you, my dear!

Like pain runs down my body my love to you, my dear.

Just as sickness is my love to you, my dear.

Just as a boil pains me my love to you, my dear.

Just as a fire burns me my love to you, my dear.

I am thinking of what you said to me

I am thinking of the love you bear me.

I am afraid of your love, my dear.

O pain! O pain!

Oh, where is my true love going, my dear?

Oh, they say she will be taken away far from here. She will

leave me, my true love, my dear.

My body feels numb on account of what I have said, my true

love, my dear.

Good-by, my true love, my dear.[250]