"

Courtship among the Nishinam Indians of California is thus described
by Powers (317):

"The Nishinam may be said to set up and dissolve the
conjugal estate almost as easily as do the brute
beasts. No stipulated payment is made for the wife. A
man seeking to become a son-in-law is bound to cater
(_ye-lin_) or make presents to the family, which is to
say, he will come along some day with a deer on his
shoulder, perhaps fling it off on the ground before the
wigwam, and go his way without a single word being
spoken. Some days later he may bring along a brace of
hare or a ham of grizzly-bear meat, or some fish, or a
string of _ha-wok_ [shell money]. He continues to make
these presents for awhile, and if he is not acceptable
to the girl and her parents they return him an
equivalent for each present (to return his gift would
be grossly insulting); but if he finds favor in her
eyes they are quietly appropriated, and in due course
of time he comes and leads her away, or comes to live
at her house."

Belden remarks (301) that a Sioux seldom gets the girl he wants to
marry to love him. He simply buys her of her parents, and as for the
girl, after being informed that she has been sold

"she immediately packs up her little keepsakes and
trinkets, and without exhibiting any emotion, such as
is common to white girls, leaves her home, and goes to
the lodge of her master,"

where she is henceforth his wife and "willing slave." Among the
Blackfoot Indians, too, there was apparently no form of courtship, and
young men seldom spoke to girls unless they were relatives. (Grinnell,
216.) It was a common thing among these Indians for a youth and a girl
not to know about each other until they were informed of their
impending marriage.

The Araucanian maidens of Chili are disposed of with even less
ceremony. In the choice of husbands, as we have seen, they have no
more freedom than a Circassian slave. Our informant (E.R. Smith, 214)
adds, however, that attachments do sometimes spring up, and, though
the lovers have little opportunity to communicate freely, they resort
occasionally to amatory songs, tender glances, and other tricks which
lovers understand. "Matrimony may follow, but such a preliminary
courtship is by no means considered necessary." When a man wants a
girl he calls on her father with his friends. While the fr