RED INDIAN COURTSHIP.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 10, Issue 754, 9 March 1888, Page 2

RED INDIAN COURTSHIP.

There are many different ways of doing the courting— somewhat different from our own, yet no less cunning and successful. Whether successful or not in the suit, the young man's relish for food and other pleasures of life is not in the least diminished ) he meets his disappointment in love unlike the civilized man who, during unfavourable periods, forsakes his meals, looks pale, and contemplates the various ways of suicide. When a young man likes a girl, he soon discovers her feelings towards hin. He will carefully follow her footsteps until he catches her alone, — sitting on the grass, on a rock, or dead tree. He quickly throws a blanket or robe over her head and crawls to her side under the protecting shelter. If the girl likes to be thus captured, there will be peace and quietness and they will sit side by side for hours, without whispering, kissings, or other endearing little trifles — they simply press closely together and looked sadly happy. But it the tjirl is averse to the proceedings, there will be a short, sharp, aud decisive battle, Vfhich always ends in the discomfiture of the amorously swain, for he dare not persist by force Captain W. P. Ciarke, in his work Bays that the " Plains Xudia.ua " do most

most of their courting in a standing position. An Indian lover will stand and wait near the lodge where abides the object of admiration until she appears, when he walks up alongside of her ar.d throws his blanket around her. If she reciprocates the tender sentiment they will thus stand' for hours, his blanket covering both their heads and loosely wrapped round both their bodies. I have seen as many as half a-dozen young men waiting by the path which led down to the water near a camp, and one after another threw his blanket around a girl as she was going down to fill the water- vessel. While so waiting or standing outside a lodge, they usually have their heads entirely covered with their blanket, excepting only a little hole for one eye. If the girl likes^) be held, she makes some reply to the first tender greeting ; if she expi&sses dislike to his advances, the man, bMthe law of courtship, must at once defflc.