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."

White woman, too, is not always above suspicion. Mrs. Eastman assures
us that she got her Sioux legends from the Indians themselves. One of
these stories is entitled "The Track Maker" (122-23). During an
interval of peace between the Chippewas and Dakotas, she relates, a
party of Chippewas visited a camp of the Dakotas. A young Dakota
warrior fell in love with a girl included in the Chippewa party.
"_Though he would have died to save her from sorrow_, yet he knew that
she could never be his wife," for the tribes were ever at war. Here
Mrs. Eastman, with the recklessness of a newspaper reporter, puts into
an Indian's head a sentiment which no Indian ever dreamt of. All the
facts cited in this chapter prove this, and, moreover, the sequel of
her own story proves it. After exchanging vows of love (!) with the
Dakotan brave, the girl departed with her Chippewa friends. Shortly
afterward two Dakotas were murdered. The Chippewas were suspected, and
a party of warriors at once broke up in pursuit of the innocent and
unsuspecting party. The girl, whose name was Flying Shadow, saw her
lover among the pursuers, who had already commenced to slaughter and
scalp the other women, though the maidens clasped their hands in a
"vain appeal to the merciless wretches, who see neither beauty nor
grace when rage and revenge are in their hearts." Throwing herself in
his arms she cried, "Save me! save me! Do not let them slay me before
your eyes; make me your prisoner! You said that you loved me, spare my
life!" He did spare her life; he simply touched her with his spear,
then passed on, and a moment later the girl was slain and scalped by
his companions. And why did the gallant and self-sacrificing lover
touch her with his spear before he left her to be murdered? Because
touching an enemy--male or female--with his spear entitles the noble
red man to wear a feather of honor as if he had taken a scalp! Yet he
"would have died to save her from sorro