If a storm in a tea-kettle is accepted as a true storm, then we may infer from these suicides the existence of deep feeling and profound despair.  As a matter of fact, a savage’s feelings are no deeper than a tea-kettle, and for that very reason they boil up and overflow more readily than if they were deeper.  Loskiel tells us (74-75), that Delaware Indians, both men and women, have committed suicide on discovering that their spouse was unfaithful; these are the same Indians among whom husbands used to abandon their wives when they had babes, and wives their husbands when there were no more presents to receive.  Yet even if we admitted such feelings to have been deep, suicide would not prove the existence of genuine affection.  Heckewelder reports instances of Indians who took their own lives because the girls they loved and were engaged to jilted them and married other men.  Was the love which led to these suicides mere sensual passion or was it refined sentiment, devoted affection?  There is nothing to tell us, and the inference from everything we know about Indians is that it was purely sensual.  Gibbs, who understood Indian nature thoroughly, took this view when he wrote (198) that among the Indians of Oregon and Washington “a strong sensual attachment” not rarely leads young women to destroy themselves on the death of a lover.  And the writer who refers in Schoolcraft (V., 272) to the frequent suicides among the Creeks declares that genuine love is unknown to any of them.  Had the young men referred to by Heckewelder lost their lives in trying to save the lives of the girls in question, it might be permissible to infer the existence of affection, but no Indian has ever been known to commit such an act.  If a savage commits suicide he does it like everything else, for selfish reasons—­as an antidote to distress—­and selfishness is the very negation of love.  The distinguished psychologist, Dr. Maudsley, has well said that

“any poor creature from the gutter can put an end to himself; there is no nobility in the act and no great amount of courage required for it.  It is a deed rather of cowardice shirking duty, generated in a monstrous feeling of self, and accomplished in the most sinful, because wicked, ignorance.”

In itself, no doubt, a suicide is apt to be extremely “romantic,” A complete dime-novel is condensed in a few remarks which Squier makes[237] anent a quaint Nicaraguan custom.

Poor girls, he says, would often get their marriage portion by having amours with several young men.  Having collected enough for a “dowry,” the girl would assemble all her lovers and ask them to build a house for her and the one she intended to choose for a husband.  She then selected the one she liked best, and the others had their pains and their past for their love.  Sometimes it happened that one of the discarded lovers committed suicide from grief.  In that case the special honor was in store for him of being eaten up by his former rivals and colleagues.  The bride also, I presume, partook of the feast—­at least after the men had had all they wanted.