“I am going to leave the country—­in a large ship—­for that sweet little woman.  I’ll try to get some beads—­of those that look like boiled ones.  Then when I’ve gone abroad—­I shall return again.  My nasty little relatives—­I’ll call them all to me—­and give them a good thrashing—­with a big rope’s end.  Then I’ll go to marry—­taking two at once.  That darling little creature—­shall only wear clothes of the spotted seal-skins, and the other little pet shall have clothes of the young hooded seals.”

Powers (227) tells a tragic tale of the California Indians, which in some respects reminds one of the man who jumped into a bramble-bush and scratched out both his eyes.

“There was once a man who loved two women and wished to marry them.  Now these two women were magpies, but they loved him not, and laughed his wooing to scorn.  Then he fell into a rage and cursed these two women, and went far away to the North.  There he set the world on fire, then made for himself a tule boat, wherein he escaped to sea, and was never seen more.”

Belden, who spent twelve years among the Sioux and other Indians, writes (302): 

“I once knew a young man who had about a dozen horses he had captured at different times from the enemy, and who fell desperately in love with a girl of nineteen. She loved him in return, but said she could not bear to leave her tribe, and go to a Santee village, unless her two sisters, aged respectively fifteen and seventeen, went with her.  Determined to have his sweetheart, the next time the warrior visited the Yankton village he took several ponies with him, and bought all three of the girls from their parents, giving five ponies for them.”

OBSTACLES TO MONOPOLISM

Heriot, during his sojourn among Canadian Indians, became convinced from what he saw that love does not admit of divided affections, and can hardly coexist with polygamy (324).  Schoolcraft notes the “curious fact” concerning the Indian that after a war “one of the first things he thought of as a proper reward for his bravery was to take another wife.”  In the chapter entitled “Honorable Polygamy” we saw how, in polygamous communities the world over, monogamy was despised as the “poor man’s marriage,” and was practised, not from choice, but from necessity.  Every man who was able to do so bought or stole several women, and joined the honorable guild of polygamists.  Such a custom, enforced by a strong public opinion, created a sentiment which greatly retarded the development of monopolism in sexual love.  A young Indian might dream of marrying a certain girl, not, however, with a view to giving her his whole heart, but only as a beginning.  The woman, it is true, was expected to give herself to one husband, but he seldom hesitated to lend her to a friend as an act of hospitality, and in many cases, would hire her out to a stranger in return for gifts.