Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 60

"Chast.i.ty was an act of penitence; to be chaste signified to do penance. Still, after a woman had once become linked to a man by the performance of certain simple rites it was unsafe for her to be caught trespa.s.sing, and her accomplice also suffered a penalty. But there was the utmost liberty, even license, as toward girls. Intercourse was almost promiscuous with members of the tribe. Toward outsiders the strictest abstinence was observed, and this fact, which has long been overlooked or misunderstood, explains the prevailing idea that before the coming of the white man the Indians were both chaste and moral, while the contrary is the truth."

Lewis and Clarke travelled a century ago among Indians that had never been visited by whites. Their observations regarding immoral practices and the means used to obviate the consequences bear out the above testimony. M'Lean (II., 59, 120) also ridicules the idea that Indians were corrupted by the whites. But the most conclusive proof of aboriginal depravity is that supplied by the discoverers of America, including Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus on his fourth voyage touched the mainland going down near Brazil. In Cariay, he writes,[203] the enchanters

"sent me immediately two girls very showily dressed.

The elder could not be more than eleven years of age and the other seven, and both exhibited so much immodesty that more could not be expected from public women."

On another page (30) he writes: "The habits of these Caribbees are brutal," adding that in their attacks on neighboring islands they carry off as many women as they can, using them as concubines. "These women also say that the Caribbees use them with such cruelty as would scarcely be believed; and that they eat the children which they bear to them."

Brazil was visited in 1501 by Amerigo Vespucci. The account he gives of the dissolute practices of the natives, who certainly had never set eye on a white man, is so plain spoken that it cannot be quoted here in full. "They are not very jealous," he says, "and are immoderately libidinous, and the women much more so than the men, so that for decency I omit to tell you the ... They are so void of affection and cruel that if they be angry with their husbands they ... and they slay an infinite number of creatures by that means.... The greatest sign of friendship which they can show you is that they give you their wives and their daughters" and feel "highly honored" if they are accepted.

"They eat all their enemies whom they kill or capture, as well females as males." "Their other barbarous customs are such that expression is too weak for the reality."

The ineradicable perverseness of some minds is amusingly ill.u.s.trated by Southey, in his _History of Brazil_. After referring to Amerigo Vespucci's statements regarding the lascivious practices of the aboriginals, he exclaims, in a footnote: "This is false! Man has never yet been discovered in such a state of depravity!" What the navigators wrote regarding the cannibalism and cruelty of these savages he accepts as a matter of course; but to doubt their immaculate purity is high treason! The att.i.tude of the sentimentalists in this matter is not only silly and ridiculous, but positively pathological. As their number is great, and seems to be growing (under the influence of such writers as Catlin, Helen Hunt Jackson, Brinton, Westermarck, etc.), it is necessary, in the interest of the truth, to paint the Indian as he really was until contact with the whites (missionaries and others) improved him somewhat.[204]

THE n.o.bLE RED MAN

Beginning with the Californians, their utter lack of moral sense has already been described. They were no worse than the other Pacific coast tribes in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska.

George Gibbs, the leading authority on the Indians of Western Oregon and Washington, says regarding them (I., 197-200):

"Prost.i.tution is almost universal. An Indian, perhaps, will not let his favorite wife, but he looks upon his others, his sisters, daughters, female relatives, and slaves, as a legitimate source of profit....

Cohabitation of unmarried females among their own people brings no disgrace if unaccompanied with child-birth, which they take care to prevent. This commences at a very early age, perhaps ten or twelve years."

"Chast.i.ty is not considered a virtue by the Chinook women," says Ross (92),

"and their amorous propensities know no bounds. All cla.s.ses, from the highest to the lowest, indulge in coa.r.s.e sensuality and shameless profligacy. Even the chief would boast of obtaining a paltry toy or trifle in return for the prost.i.tution of his virgin daughter."

Lewis and Clarke (1814) found that among the Chinooks, "_as, indeed, among all Indians_" they became acquainted with on their perilous pioneer trips through the Western wilds, prost.i.tution of females was not considered criminal or improper (439).

Such revelations, ill.u.s.trating not individual cases of depravity, but a whole people's att.i.tude, show how utterly hopeless it is to expect refined and pure love of these Indians. Gibbs did not give himself up to any illusions on this subject. "A strong _sensual_ attachment often undoubtedly exists," he wrote (198),

"which leads to marriage, and instances are not rare of young women destroying themselves on the death of a lover; but where the idea of chast.i.ty is so entirely wanting in both s.e.xes, _this cannot deserve the name of love_, or it is at best of a temporary duration." The italics are mine.

In common with several other high authorities who lived many years among the Indians (as we shall see at the end of this chapter) Gibbs clearly realized the difference between red love and white love--between sensual and sentimental attachments, and failed to find the latter among the American savages.

British Columbian capacity for s.e.xual delicacy and refined love is sufficiently indicated by the reference on a preceding page (556) to the stories collected by Dr. Boas. Turning northeastward we find M'Lean, who spent twenty-five years among the Hudson's Bay natives, declaring of the Beaver Indians (Chippewayans) that "the unmarried youth, of both s.e.xes, are generally under no restraint whatever," and that "the lewdness of the Carrier [Taculli] Indians cannot possibly be carried to a greater excess." M'Lean, too, after observing these northern Indians for a quarter of a century, came to the conclusion that "the tender pa.s.sion seems unknown to the savage breast."

"The Hurons are lascivious," wrote Le Jeune (whom I have already quoted), in 1632; and Parkman says (_J.N.A._, x.x.xIV.):

"A practice also prevailed of temporary or experimental marriage, lasting a day, a week, or more.... An attractive and enterprising damsel might, and often did, make twenty such marriages before her final establishing."

Regarding the Sioux, that shrewd observer, Burton, wrote (_C. of S._, 116): "If the mother takes any care of her daughter's virtue, it is only out of regard to its market value." The Sioux, or Dakotas, are indeed, sometimes lower than animals, for, as S.R. Riggs pointed out, in a government publication (_U.S. Geogr. and Geol. Soc._, Vol. IX.), "Girls are sometimes taken very young, before they are of marriageable age, which generally happens with a man who has a wife already." "The marriageable age," he adds, "is from fourteen years old and upward."

Even the Mandans, so highly lauded by Catlin, sometimes brutally dispose of girls at the age of eleven, as do other tribes (Comanches, etc.).

Of the Chippewas, Ottawas, and Winnebagoes we read in H. Trumbull's _History of the Indian Wars_ (168):

"It appears to have been a very prevalent custom with the Indians of this country, before they became acquainted with the Europeans, to compliment strangers with their wives;"

and "the Indian women in general are amorous, and before marriage not less esteemed for gratifying their pa.s.sions."

Of the New York Indians J. Buchanan wrote (II., 104):

"that it is no offence for their married women to a.s.sociate with another man, provided she acquaint her husband or some near relation therewith, but if not, it is sometimes punishable with death."

Of the Comanches it is said (Schoolcraft, V., 683) that while "the men are grossly licentious, treating female captives in a most cruel and barbarous manner," upon their women "they enforce rigid chast.i.ty;" but this is, as usual, a mere question of masculine property, for on the next page we read that they lend their wives; and Fossey (_Mexique_, 462) says: "Les Comanches obligent le prisonnier blanc, dont ils ont admire le valeur dans le combat, a s'unir a leurs femmes pour perpetuer sa race." Concerning the Kickapoo, Kansas, and Osage Indians we are informed by Hunter (203), who lived among them, that

"a female may become a parent out of wedlock without loss of reputation, or diminishing her chances for a subsequent matrimonial alliance, so that her paramour is of respectable standing."

Maximilian Prinz zu Weid found that the Blackfeet, though they horribly mutilated wives for secret intrigues [violation of property right], offered these wives as well as their daughters for a bottle of whiskey. "Some very young girls are offered" (I., 531). "The Navajo women are very loose, and do not look upon fornication as a crime."

"The most unfortunate thing which can befall a captive woman is to be claimed by two persons. In this case she is either shot or delivered up for indiscriminate violence" (Bancroft, I., 514).

Colonel R.I. Dodge writes of the Indians of the plains (204):

"For an unmarried Indian girl to be found away from her lodge alone is to invite outrage, consequently she is never sent out to cut and bring wood, nor to take care of the stock."

He speaks of the "Indian men who, animal-like, approach a female only to make love to her," and to whom the idea of continence is unknown (210). Among the Cheyennes and Arapahoes

"no unmarried woman considers herself dressed to meet her beau at night, to go to a dance or other gathering, unless she has tied her lower limbs with a rope....

Custom has made this an almost perfect protection against the brutality of the men. Without it she would not be safe for an instant, and even with it, an unmarried girl is not safe if found alone away from the immediate protection of the lodge" (213).

A brother does not protect his sister from insult, nor avenge outrage (220).

"Nature has no n.o.bler specimen of man than the Indian," wrote Catlin, the sentimentalist, who is often cited as an authority. To proceed: "Prost.i.tution is the rule among the (Yuma) women, not the exception."

The Colorado River Indians "barter and sell their women into prost.i.tution, with hardly an exception." (Bancroft, I., 514.) In his _Antiquities of the Southern Indians_, C.C. Jones says of the Creeks, Cherokees, Muscogulges, etc. (69):

"Comparatively little virtue existed among the unmarried women. Their chances of marriage were not diminished, but rather augmented, by the fact that they had been great favorites, provided they had avoided conception during their years of general pleasure."

The wife "was deterred, by fear of public punishment, from the commission of indiscretions." "The unmarried women among the Natchez were unusually unchaste," says McCulloh (165).

This d.a.m.ning list might be continued for the Central and South American Indians. We should find that the Mosquito Indians often did not wait for p.u.b.erty (Bancroft, I., 729); that, according to Martius, Oviedo, and Navarette,

"in Cuba, Nicaragua,[205] and among the Caribs and Tupis, the bride yielded herself first to another, lest her husband should come to some ill-luck by exercising a priority of possession.... This _jus primae noctis_ was exercised by the priests" (Brinton, _M.N.W._, 155);

that the Waraus give girls to medicine men in return for professional services (Brett, 320); that the Guaranis lend their wives and daughters for a drink (Reich, 435); that among Brazilian tribes the _jus primae noctis_ is often enjoyed by the chief (_Journ. Roy. G.S._, II., 198); that in Guiana "chast.i.ty is not considered an indispensable virtue among the unmarried women" (Dalton, I., 80); that the Patagonians often p.a.w.ned and sold their wives and daughters for brandy (Falkner, 97); that their licentiousness is equal to their cruelty (Bourne, 56-57), etc., etc.

APPARENT EXCEPTIONS

A critical student will not be able, I think, to find any exceptions to this rule of Indian depravity among tribes untouched by missionary influences. Westermarck, indeed, refers (65) with satisfaction to Hearne's a.s.sertion (311) that the northern Indians he visited carefully guarded the young people. Had he consulted page 129 of the same writer he would have seen that this does not indicate a regard for chast.i.ty as a virtue, but is merely a result of their habit of regarding women as property, to which Franklin, speaking of these same Indians, refers (287); for as Hearne remarks in the place alluded to, "it is a very common custom among the men of this country to exchange a night's lodging with each other's wives." An equal lack of insight is shown by Westermarck, when he professes to find female chast.i.ty among the Apaches. For this a.s.sertion he relies on Bancroft, who does indeed say (I., 514) that "all authorities agree that the Apache women, both before and after marriage, are remarkably pure." Yet he himself adds that the Apaches will lend their wives to each other.[206] If the women are otherwise chaste, it is not from a regard for purity, but from fear of their cruel husbands and masters. United States Boundary Commissioner, Bartlett, has enlightened us on this point. "The atrocities inflicted upon an Apache woman taken in adultery baffle all description," he writes, "and the females whom they capture from their enemies are invariably doomed to the most infamous treatment." Thus they are like other Indians--the Comanches, for instance, concerning whom we read in Schoolcraft (V., 683) that "the men are grossly licentious, treating female captives in a most cruel and barbarous manner; but they enforce rigid chast.i.ty upon their women."

Among the Modocs a wife who violated her husband's property rights in her "chast.i.ty," was disembowelled in public, as Bancroft informs us (I., 350). No wonder, that, as he adds, "adultery, being attended with so much danger, is comparatively rare, but among the unmarried, who have nothing to fear, a gross licentiousness prevails."

The Peruvian sun virgins are often supposed to indicate a regard for purity; but in reality the temples in which these girls were reared and guarded were nothing but nurseries for providing a choice a.s.sortment of concubines for the licentious Incas and their friends.

(Torquemada, IX., 16.)[207]

"In the earlier times of Peru the union of the s.e.xes was voluntary, unregulated, and accompanied by barbarous usages: many of which even at the present day exist among the uncivilized nations of South America." (Tschudi's _Antiquities_, 184; McCulloh, 379.)

Of the Mexicans, too, it has been erroneously said that they valued purity; but Bandelier has collected facts from the old Spanish writers, in summing which up he says: "This almost establishes promiscuity among the ancient Mexicans, as a preliminary to formal marriage." Oddly enough, the crime of adultery with a married woman was considered one against a cl.u.s.ter of kindred, and not against the husband; for if he caught the culprits _in flagrante delictu_ and killed the wife, he lost his own life!