“They are in no sense love-songs, they have nothing to do with courtship, and are reserved for the exclusive audience of men.”  “The true love-song, called by the Omahas Bethae wa-an ... is sung generally in the early morning, when the lover is keeping his tryst and watching for the maiden to emerge from the tent and go to the spring.  They belong to the secret courtship, and are sometimes called Me-the-g’thun wa-an—­courting songs.”  “The few words in these songs convey the one poetic sentiment:  ‘With the day I come to you;’ or ‘Behold me as the day dawns.’  Few unprejudiced listeners,” the writer adds, “will fail to recognize in the Bethae wa-an, or love-songs, the emotion and the sentiment that prompts a man to woo the woman of his choice.”

Miss Fletcher is easily satisfied.  For my part I cannot see in a tune, however rapturously sung or fluted, or in the words “with the day I come to you” and the like any sign of real sentiment or the faintest symptom differentiating the two kinds of love.  Moreover, as Miss Fletcher herself remarks: 

“The Omahas as a tribe have ceased to exist.  The young men and women are being educated in English speech, and imbued with English thought; their directive emotion will hereafter take the lines of our artistic forms.”

Even if traces of sexual sentiment were to be found among Indians like the Ornahas, who have been subjected for some generations to civilizing influences, they would allow no inference as to the love-affairs of the real, wild Indian.

Miss Fletcher makes the same error as Professor Fillmore, who assisted her in writing A Study of Omaha Indian Music.  He took the wild Indian tunes and harnessed them to modern German harmonies—­a procedure as unscientific as it would be unhistoric to make Cicero record his speeches in a phonograph.  Miss Fletcher takes simple Indian songs and reads into them the feelings of a New York or Boston woman.  The following is an instance.  A girl sings to a warrior (I give only Miss Fletcher’s translation, omitting the Indian words):  “War; when you returned; die; you caused me; go when you did; God; I appealed; standing,” This literal version our author explains and translates freely, as follows: 

“No. 82 is the confession of a woman to the man she loves, that he had conquered her heart before he had achieved a valorous reputation.  The song opens upon the scene.  The warrior had returned victorious and passed through the rites of the Tent of War, so he is entitled to wear his honors publicly; the woman tells him how, when he started on the war-path, she went up on the hill and standing there cried to Wa-kan-da to grant him success.  He who had now won that success had even then vanquished her heart, ‘had caused her to die’ to all else but the thought of him"(!)

Another instance of this emotional embroidery may be found on pages 15-17 of the same treatise.