“It is not unusual to find on the small prairies human figures rudely carved upon trees.  These I have understood to have been cut by young men who were in want of wives, as a sort of practical intimation that they were in the market as purchasers.”

It might be suggested that such a crude love-letter to the sex in general, as compared with one of our own love-letters to a particular girl, gives a fair idea of what Indian love is, compared with the love of civilized men and women.

SHALLOW PREDILECTION

Even where there is an appearance of predilection it is apt to be shallow and fragile.  In the Jesuit Relations (XVIII., 129) we read how a Huron youth came to one of the missionaries and said he needed a wife to make his snow-shoes and clothes.  “I am in love with a young girl,” said he.  “I beg you to call my relatives together and to consider whether she is suitable for me.  If you decide that it is for my good, I will marry her; if not, I will follow your advice.”  Other young Indians used to come to the missionaries to ask them to find wives for them.  I have been struck, in reading Indian love-stories, by the fact that their gist usually lies not in an exhibition of decided preference for one man but of violent aversion to another—­some old and disagreeable suitor.  It is well known, too, that among Indians, as among Australians, marriage was sometimes considered an affair of the tribe rather than of the individual; and we have some curious illustrations of the way in which various tribes of Indians would try to crush the germs of individual preference.

REPRESSION OF PREFERENCE

Thus Hunter relates (243) of the Missouri and Arkansas tribes that “It is considered disgraceful for a young Indian publicly to prefer one woman to another until he has distinguished himself either in war or in the chase.”  Should an Indian pay any girl, though he may have known her from childhood, special attention before he has won reputation as a warrior, “he would be sure to suffer the painful mortification of a rejection; he would become the derision of the warriors and the contempt of the squaws.”  In the Jesuit Relations (III., 73) we read of some of the Canadian Indians that

“they have a very rude way of making love; for the suitor, as soon as he shows a preference for a girl, does not dare look at her, nor speak to her, nor stay near her unless accidentally; and then he must force himself not to look her in the face, nor to give any sign of his passion, otherwise he would be the laughing-stock of all, and his sweetheart would blush for him.”

Not only must he show no preference, but the choice, too, is not left to him; for the relatives take up the matter and decide whether his age, skill as a hunter, reputation, and family make him a desirable match.