“but we hear of some Dacotah girl who puts an end to her life in consequence of jealousy, or from the fear of being forced to marry some one she dislikes.  A short time ago a very young girl hung herself rather than become the wife of a man who was already the husband of one of her sisters.”

It cannot be denied that in some of these cases (which might be multiplied indefinitely) there is a strong provocation to self-murder.  But as a rule suicide among Indians, as among other savages and barbarians, and among civilized races, is not proof of strong feeling, but of a weak intellect.  The Chippewas themselves hold it to be a foolish thing (Keating, II., 168); and among the Indians in general it was usually resorted to for the most trivial causes.

“The very frequent suicides committed [by Creeks] in consequence of the most trifling disappointment or quarrel between men and women are not the result of grief, but of savage and unbounded revenge.”

(Schoolcraft, V., 272.) Krauss (222) found that suicide was frequent among the Alaskan Thlinket Indians.  Men sometimes resorted to it when they saw no other way of securing revenge, for a person who causes a suicide is fined and punished as if he were a murderer.  One woman cut her throat because a shahman accused her of having by sorcery caused another one’s illness.  A favorite mode of committing suicide is to go out into the sea, cast away oar and rudder, and deliver themselves to wind and waves.  Sometimes they change their mind.  A man, whose face had been all scratched up by his angry wife, left home to end his life; but after spending the night with a trader he concluded to go home and make up the quarrel.  Mrs. Eastman (48) tells of an old squaw who wanted to hang herself because she was angry with her son; but when, “after having doubled the strap four times to prevent its breaking, she found herself choking, her courage gave way—­she yelled frightfully.”  They cut her down and in an hour or two she was quite well again.  Another squaw, aged ninety, attempted to hang herself because the men would not allow her to go with a war-party.  Her object in wanting to go was to have the pleasure of mutilating the corpses of enemies!  Keating says that Sank men sometimes kill themselves because they are envious of the power of others.  Neill (85) records the cases of a Dakota wife who hanged herself because her husband had flogged her for hiding his whiskey; of a woman who hanged herself because her son-in-law refused to give her whiskey; of an old woman who flew into a passion and committed suicide because her pet granddaughter had been whipped by her father.