We are now in a position to appreciate the unintentional humor of Ashe’s indignant outcry, cited at the beginning of this chapter, against those who calumniate these innocent people “by denying that there is anything but ‘brutal passion’ in their love-affairs.”  He admits, indeed, that “no expressions of endearment or tenderness ever escape the Indian sexes toward each other,” as all observers have remarked, but claims that this reserve is merely a compliance with a political and religious law which “stigmatizes youth wasting their time in female dalliance, except when covered with the veil of night and beyond the prying eye of man.”  Were a man to speak to a squaw of love in the daytime, he adds, she would run away from him or disdain him.  He then proceeds, with astounding naivete, to describe the nocturnal love-making of “these innocent people.”  The Indians leave their doors open day and night, and the lovers take advantage of this when they go a-courting, or “a-calumeting,” as it is called.

“A young man lights his calumet, enters the cabin of his mistress, and gently presents it to her.  If she extinguishes it she admits him to her arms; but if she suffer it to burn unnoticed he softly retires with a disappointed and throbbing heart, knowing that while there was light she never could consent to his wishes.  This spirit of nocturnal amour and intrigue is attended by one dreadful practice:  the girls drink the juice of a certain herb which prevents conception and often renders them barren through life.  They have recourse to this to avoid the shame of having a child—­a circumstance in which alone the disgrace of their conduct consists, and which would be thought a thing so heinous as to deprive them forever of respect and religious marriage rites. The crime is in the discovery.”  “I never saw gallantry conducted with more refinement than I did during my stay with the Shawnee nation.”

In brief, Ashe’s idea of “refined” love consists in promiscuous immorality carefully concealed!  “On the subject of love,” he sums up with an injured air, “no persons have been less understood than the Indians.”  Yet this writer is cited seriously as a witness by Westermarck and others!

In view of the foregoing facts every candid reader must admit that to an Indian an expression like “Love hath weaned my heart from low desires,” or Werther’s “She is sacred to me; all desire is silent in her presence,” would be as incomprehensible as Hegel’s metaphysics; that, in other words, mental purity, one of the most essential and characteristic ingredients of romantic love, is always absent in the Indian’s infatuation.  The late Professor Brinton tried to come to the rescue by declaring (E.A., 297) that