An excellent test of the Indian's capacity for refined amorous feeling may be found in his attitude toward personal beauty. Does he admire real beauty, and does it decide his choice of a mate? That there are good-looking girls among some Indian tribes cannot be denied, though they are exceptional. Among the thousands of squaws I have seen on the Pacific Slope, from Mexico to Alaska, I can recall only one whom I could call really beautiful. She was a pupil at a Sitka Indian school, spoke English well, and I suspect had some white blood in her. Joaquin Miller, who married a Modoc girl and is given to romancing and idealizing, relates (227) how "the brown-eyed girls danced, gay and beautiful, half-nude, in their rich black hair and flowing robes." Herbert Walsh,[208] speaking of the girls at a Navajo Indian school, writes that
"among them was one little girl of striking beauty, with fine, dark eyes, regularly and delicately modelled features, and a most winning expression. Nothing could be more attractive than the unconscious grace of this child of nature."
I can find no indication, however, that the Indians ever admire such exceptional beauty, and plenty of evidence that what they admire is not beautiful. "These Indians are far from being connoisseurs in beauty," wrote Mrs. Eastman (105) of the Dakotas. Dobrizhoffer says of the Abipones (II., 139) what we read in Schoolcraft concerning the Creeks: "Beauty is of no estimation in either sex;" and I have also previously quoted Belden's testimony (302), that the men select the squaws not for their personal beauty but "their strength and ability to work;" to which he should have added, their weight; for bulk is the savage's synonym for beauty. Burton (C.S., 128) admired the pretty doll-like faces of the Sioux girls, but only up to the age of six. "When full grown the figure becomes dumpy and trapu;" and that is what attracts the Indian. The examples given in the chapter on Personal Beauty of the Indians' indifference to geological layers of dirt on their faces and bodies would alone prove beyond all possibility of dispute that they can have no esthetic appreciation of personal charms. The very highest type of Indian beauty is that described by Powers in the case of a California girl
"just gliding out of the uncomfortable obesity of youth, her complexion a soft, creamy hazel, her wide eyes dreamy and idle … a not unattractive type of vacuous, facile, and voluptuous beauty"
—a beauty, I need not add, which may attract, but would not inspire love of the sentimental kind, even if the Indian were capable of it.
ARE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS GALLANT?
Having failed to find mental purity and admiration of personal beauty in the Indian's love-affairs, let us now see how he stands in regard to the altruistic impulses which differentiate love from self-love. Do Indians behave gallantly toward their women? Do they habitually sacrifice their comfort and, in case of need, their lives for their wives?
Dr. Brinton declares (Am. R., 48) that "the position of women in the social scheme of the American tribes has often been portrayed in darker colors than the truth admits." Another eminent American anthropologist, Horatio Hale, wrote[209] that women among the Indians and other savages are not treated with harshness or regarded as inferiors except under special circumstances. "It is entirely a question of physical comfort, and mainly of the abundance or lack of food," he maintains. For instance, among the sub-arctic Tinneh, women are "slaves," while among the Tinneh (Navajos) of sunny Arizona they are "queens." Heckewelder declares (T.A.P.S., 142) that the labors of the squaws "are no more than their fair share, under every consideration and due allowance, of the hardships attendant on savage life." This benevolent and oft-cited old writer shows indeed such an eager desire to whitewash the Indian warrior that an ignorant reader of his book might find some difficulty in restraining his indignation at the horrid, lazy squaws for not also relieving the poor, unprotected men of the only two duties which they have retained for themselves—murdering men or animals. But the most "fearless" champion of the noble red man is a woman—Rose Yawger—who writes (in The Indian and the Pioneer, 42) that "the position of the Indian woman in her nation was not greatly inferior to that enjoyed by the American woman of to-day." … "They were treated with great respect." Let us confront these assertions with facts.
Beginning with the Pacific Coast, we are told by Powers (405) that, on the whole, California Indians did not make such slaves of women as the Indians of the Atlantic side of the continent. This, however, is merely comparative, and does not mean that they treat them kindly, for, as he himself says (23), "while on a journey the man lays far the greatest burdens on his wife." On another page (406) he remarks that while a California boy is not "taught to pierce his mother's flesh with an arrow to show him his superiority over her, as among the Apaches and Iroquois," he nevertheless afterward "slays his wife or mother-in-law, if angry, with very little compunction." Colonel McKee, in describing an expedition among California Indians (Schoolcraft, III., 127), writes:
"One of the whites here, in breaking in his squaw to her household duties, had occasion to beat her several times. She complained of this to her tribe and they informed him that he must not do so; if he was dissatisfied, let him kill her and take another!" "The men," he adds, "allow themselves the privilege of shooting any woman they are tired of."