The girls did come to his mother, and they said they would like to be his wives. When the mother told him this, he replied: "I suppose they want to get back the pieces they cut out of their blankets." He took the pieces, gave them to the girls, with taunting words, and drove them away.
THE DANGER OF COQUETRY
The moral of this sarcastic conclusion obviously was intended to be that girls must not show independence and refuse a man, though he be a reckless gambler, so poor that he has to eat pebbles, and so ugly that he needs to have a new head put on him. Another story, the moral of which was "to teach girls the danger of coquetry," is told by Schoolcraft (Oneota, 381-84). There was a girl who refused all her suitors scornfully. In one case she went so far as to put together her thumb and three fingers, and, raising her hand gracefully toward the young man, deliberately open them in his face. This gesticulatory mode of rejection is an expression of the highest contempt, and it galled the young warrior so much that he was taken ill and took to his bed until he thought out a plan of revenge which cured him. He carried it out with the aid of a powerful spirit, or personal Manito. They made a man of rags and dirt, cemented it with snow and brought it to life. The girl fell in love with this man and followed him to the marshes, where the snow-cement melted away, leaving nothing but a pile of rags and dirt. The girl, unable to find her way back, perished in the wilderness.
THE GIRL MARKET
In the vast majority of instances the Indians did not simply try to curb woman's efforts to secure freedom of choice by intimidating her or inventing warning stories, but held the reins so tightly that a woman's having a will of her own was out of the question. It may be said that there are three principal stages in the evolution of the custom of choosing a wife. In the first and lowest stage a man casts his eyes on a woman and tries to get her, utterly regardless of her own wishes. In the second, an attempt is made to win at least her good-will, while in the third—which civilized nations are just entering—a lover would refuse to marry a girl at the expense of her happiness. A few Indian tribes have got as far as the second stage, but most of them belong to the first. Provided a warrior coveted a girl, and provided her parents were satisfied with the payment he offered, matters were settled without regard to the girl's wishes. To avoid needless friction it was sometimes deemed wise to first gain the girl's good-will; but this was a matter of secondary importance. "It is true," says Smith in his book on the Indians of Chili (214),
"that the Araucanian girl is not regularly put up for sale and bartered for, like the Oriental houris; but she is none the less an article of merchandise, to be paid for by him who would aspire to her hand. She has no more freedom in the choice of her husband than has the Circassian slave."
"Marriage with the North Californians," says Bancroft (I., 349),
"is essentially a matter of business. The young brave must not hope to win his bride by feats of arms or softer wooing, but must buy her of her father like any other chattel, and pay the price at once, or resign in favor of a richer man. The inclinations of the girl are in nowise consulted; no matter where her affections are placed, she goes to the highest bidder. The purchase effected, the successful suitor leads his blushing property to his hut and she becomes his wife without further ceremony. Wherever this system of wife-purchase obtains the rich old men almost absorb the youth and beauty of the tribe, while the younger and poorer men must content themselves with old and ugly wives. Hence their eagerness for that wealth which will enable them to throw away their old wives and buy new ones."[226]
A favorable soil for the growth of romantic and conjugal love! The Omahas have a proverb that an old man cannot win a girl, he can only win her parents; nevertheless if the old man has the ponies he gets the girl. The Indians insist on their rights, too. Powers tells (318) of a California (Nishinam) girl who loathed the man that had a claim on her. She took refuge with a kind old widow, who deceived the pursuers. When the deception was discovered, the noble warriors drew their arrows and shot the widow to death in the middle of the village amid general approval. I myself once saw a poor Arizona girl who had taken refuge with a white family. When I saw the man to whom she had been sold—a dirty old tramp whom a decent person would not want in the same tribe, much less in the same wigwam—I did not wonder she hated him; but he had paid for her and she was ultimately obliged to live with him.
Of the Mandans, Catlin says (I., 119) that wives "are mostly treated for with the father, as in all instances they are regularly bought and sold." Belden relates (32) how he married a Sioux girl. One evening his Indian friend Frombe came to his lodge and said he would take him to see his sweetheart.