o have been deep,
suicide would not prove the existence of genuine affection.
Heckewelder reports instances of Indians who took their own lives
because the girls they loved and were engaged to jilted them and
married other men. Was the love which led to these suicides mere
sensual passion or was it refined sentiment, devoted affection? There
is nothing to tell us, and the inference from everything we know about
Indians is that it was purely sensual. Gibbs, who understood Indian
nature thoroughly, took this view when he wrote (198) that among the
Indians of Oregon and Washington "a strong sensual attachment" not
rarely leads young women to destroy themselves on the death of a
lover. And the writer who refers in Schoolcraft (V., 272) to the
frequent suicides among the Creeks declares that genuine love is
unknown to any of them. Had the young men referred to by Heckewelder
lost their lives in trying to save the lives of the girls in question,
it might be permissible to infer the existence of affection, but no
Indian has ever been known to commit such an act. If a savage commits
suicide he does it like everything else, for selfish reasons--as an
_antidote to distress_--and selfishness is the very negation of love.
The distinguished psychologist, Dr. Maudsley, has well said that

"any poor creature from the gutter can put an end to
himself; there is no nobility in the act and no great
amount of courage required for it. It is a deed rather
of cowardice shirking duty, generated in _a monstrous
feeling of self_, and accomplished in the most sinful,
because wicked, ignorance."

In itself, no doubt, a suicide is apt to be extremely "romantic,"
A complete dime-novel is condensed in a few remarks which Squier
makes[237] anent a quaint Nicaraguan custom.

Poor girls, he says, would often get their marriage portion by having
amours with several young men. Having collected enough for a "dowry,"
the girl would assemble all her lovers and ask them to build a house
for her and the one she intended to choose for a husband. She then
selected the one she liked best, and the others had their pains and
their past for their love. Sometimes it happened that one of the
discarded lovers committed suicide from grief. In that case the
special honor was in store for him of being eaten up by his former
rivals and colleagues. The bride also, I presume, partook of the
feast--at least after the men had had all they want