“The flageolet is the musical instrument of young men and is principally used in love-affairs to attract the attention of the maiden and reveal the presence of the lover,” says Miss Alice Fletcher, who has written some entertaining and valuable treatises on Indian music and love-songs.[244] Mirrors, too, are used to attract the attention of girls, as appears from a charming idyl sketched by Miss Fletcher, which I will reproduce here, somewhat condensed.

One day, while dwelling with the Omahas, Miss Fletcher was wandering in quest of spring flowers near a creek when she was arrested by a sudden flash of light among the branches.  “Some young man is near,” she thought, “signalling with his mirror to a friend or sweetheart.”  She had hardly seen a young fellow who did not carry a looking-glass dangling at his side.  The flashing signal was soon followed by the wild cadences of a flute.  In a few moments the girls came in sight, with merry faces, chatting gayly.  Each one carried a bucket.  Down the hill, on the other side of the brook, advanced two young men, their gay blankets hanging from one shoulder.  The girls dipped their pails in the stream and turned to leave when one of the young men jumped across the creek and confronted one of the girls, her companion walking away some distance.  The lovers stood three feet apart, she with downcast face, he evidently pleading his cause to not unwilling ears.  By and by she drew from her belt a package containing a necklace, which she gave to the young man, who took it shyly from her hands.  A moment later the girl had joined her friend, and the man recrossed the brook, where he and his friend flung themselves on the grass and examined the necklace.  Then they rose to go.  Again the flute was heard gradually dying away in the distance.

INDIAN LOVE-POEMS

As it is not customary for an Indian to call at the lodge where a girl lives, about the only chance an Omaha has to woo is at the creek where the girl fetches water, as in the above idyl.  Hence courting is always done in secret, the girls never telling the elders, though they may compare notes with each other.

“Generally an honorable courtship ends in a more or less speedy elopement and marriage, but there are men and women who prefer dalliance, and it is this class that furnishes the heroes and heroines of the Wa-oo-wa-an.”

These Wa-oo-wa-an, or woman songs, are a sort of ballad relating the experiences of young men and women.  “They are sung by young men when in each other’s company, and are seldom overheard by women, almost never by women of high character;” they “belong to that season in a man’s career when ‘wild oats’ are said to be sown.”  Some of them are vulgar, others humorous.