University of Virginia Library

LOVE AND MARRIAGE.

My feelings have often been mortified in reading in American histories that it was a custom among our people to marry for so many moons. There never was a greater misstatement. All our traditions most clearly show that, in our primitive state, we were a very virtuous people. Love and marriage were regarded as of divine origin. The false reports quoted in histories were made by white fur-traders, who, in early days, came among us, and, in order to get in closer touch with

our people, intermarried. They afterward deserted their Indian wives and children; returning to their own people, and branding us with the lie in order to hide their own shame.

When our boys and girls become warmly attached to each other, they confidentially talk the matter over with their parents, who always sympathize with them in their love affairs; for, believe me, our children are never laughed at and tormented, as is the case with white people, as though it were a crime to fall in love.

When lovers are married they repeat, generally in presence of both families, the following: "We now marry each other for life, before all our friends, now here assembled, by the command of the Great Spirit, who has united our hearts in one."

Then the lovers simply join hands; their lips in mutual concert meet, and the marriage-knot is tied for life.