"WHITE MAN TOO MUCH LIE"
It is otherwise with a class of Indian tales of which Schoolcraft's
are samples, and a few more of which may here be referred to. With the
unquestioning trust of a child the learned Waitz accepts as a specimen
of genuine romantic love a story[253] of an Indian maiden who, when an
arrow was aimed at her lover's heart, sprang before him and received
the barbed shaft in her own heart; and another of a Creek Indian who
jumped into a cataract with the girl he loved, meeting death with her
when he found he could not escape the tomahawk of the pursuers. The
solid facts of the first story will be hinted at presently in speaking
of Pocahontas; and as for the second story it is, reduced to Indian
realism, simply an incident of an elopement and pursuit such as may
have easily happened, though the motive of the elopement was nothing
more than the usual desire to avoid paying for the girl. Such
sentences as "she loved him with an intensity of passion that only the
noblest souls know," and "they vowed eternal love; they vowed to live
and die with each other," ought to have opened Waitz's eyes to the
fact that he was not reading an actual Indian story, but a story
sentimentalized and embellished in the cheapest modern dime-novel
style. The only thing such stories tell us is that "white man too much
lie.
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