urd
to speak of Indian "fairies who love romantic scenes," or of a girl
romantically sitting on a rocky promontory,[198] or "gathering strange
flowers;" for Indians have no conception of the romantic side of
nature--of scenery for its own sake. To them a tree is simply a grouse
perch, or a source of fire-wood; a lake, a fish-pond, a mountain, the
dreaded abode of evil spirits. In the tale of the "Buffalo King" we
read of the chief doing a number of things to win the affection of the
refractory bride--telling the others not to displease her, giving her
"the seat of honor," and going so far as to fast himself, whereas in
real life, under such circumstances, he would have curtly clubbed the
stolen bride into submission. In the tale of the "Red Lover" the girl
is admired for her "slender form," whereas a real Indian values a
woman in proportion to her weight and rotundity. Indians do not make
"protestations of inviolable attachment," or "pledge vows of mutual
fidelity," like the lovers of our fashionable novels. As Charles A.
Leland remarks of the same race of Indians (85), "When an Indian seeks
a wife, he or his mutual friend makes no great ado about it, but
utters two words which tell the whole story." But there is no need of
citing other authors, for Schoolcraft, as I have just intimated,
stands convicted by his own action. In the second edition of his
_Algic Researches_, which appeared after an interval of seventeen
years and received the title of _The Myth of Hiawatha and other Oral
Legends of the North American Indians_, he seemed to remember what he
wrote in the preface of the first regarding these stories, "that in
the original there is no attempt at ornament," so he removed nearly
all of the romantic embroideries, like those I have italicized and
commented on, and also relegated the majority of his ludicrously
sentimental interspersed poems to the appendix. In the preface to
_Hiawatha_, he refers in connection with some of these verses to "the
poetic use of aboriginal ideas." Now, a man has a perfect right to
make such "poetic use" of "aboriginal ideas," but not when he has led
his readers to believe that he is telling these stories "as nearly as
possible in their original forms of thought and expression." It is
very much as if Edward MacDowell had published the several movements
of his Indian Suite as being, not only in their ideas, but in their
(modern European) harmonies and orchestration, a faithful transcript