Umbrella Bells and Flute Concert: How North American Indians Flirted with Girls

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Indians in the mass representation of Europeans are, first of all, fierce and brave warriors. But the life of the indigenous North American people was not only war. They hunted, played, fell in love, and had families. True, the rules of Indian flirting will seem very harsh to us.

The requirements for girls among the North American Indians were strict. Virginity and silence were required of her. It was considered reprehensible for a girl to even raise her eyes once again at the young man. So the consent or disagreement to accept the courtship of the girl was often shown with a short sign. But at the same time, violent marriages were rare: young people usually chose each other themselves. True, this only concerned relations within the tribe. Kidnapping and forcibly making a wife a girl from another tribe was not considered something bad.

When a girl became a girl to be taken as a wife, it was often seen in her costume. For example, the addition of red to the embroidery on clothing was a popular sign. The Sioux also had a whole ritual of introducing a girl, which was performed after her first regulations: her relatives arranged a feast, to which the entire tribe was called. At the feast, the girl adorned with brand new adult clothes and hair, so that those who missed the feast knew that she could now get married.

Usually, at such a feast, the girl sat among the respected members of the tribe, accepting gifts and compliments, and one of the elders gave a special speech for her. All in all, it was like a one-on-one prom. At the feast, the young men could properly discern a possible bride - after all, before that they looked at her with the same eyes as at any other child. So that the girl, in turn, looked at the young men with adult eyes, dances were arranged at the feast: the youth danced around the fire to the drums.

For many North American Indians, the main attribute of courtship was the flute. An unmarried young man played the flute in public, standing not far from the girl's dwelling; a man who wanted to take someone else's wife away quietly played the flute at night until the heart of his beloved was exhausted by gentle sounds and she came out to leave with him. Among the Indians, they were terribly punished for treason, but open divorces in most tribes were committed easily and naturally, so that a warrior or hunter, fearing that someone would seduce his wife, hugged her tightly at night, and in the morning combed her hair - this was considered a sure way to tie heart of a woman. The young man, who played the flute for the girl in public, always dressed in the most beautiful clothes.

The Sioux and some other Indians also used blankets. Wrapped in a blanket, the young men, sometimes in several, waited for the girl near the tepee. If she was going somewhere, everyone tried to jump up to her and wrap the two of them with a blanket in order to talk privately, to utter the warmest words. This was essentially the only opportunity for teenagers to retire without being mocked: no one saw who the girl was whispering with to reproach her with this, but everyone saw that two were standing, not lying.

If the girl did not go anywhere alone, in order to avoid annoying courtship, the young men approached one by one to the threshold of the dwelling, where she sat with embroidery (after all, there were no windows in the tipi, and light was required for needlework), and, wrapped in blankets from head to toe, so that no one ridiculed them for their immodesty, whispered confessions and compliments. The shy woman with embroidery did not even raise her eyes, and why? After all, she looked at the moccasins, by which she could later recognize the young warrior.

The Forest Indians used to wait on the path to the stream. The young man jumped out in front of the girl he liked. If she stopped, it meant agreeing to get married; then the young man spoke quickly when he came with the wedding gifts. If the girl passed by calmly, this meant that the offer was rejected.

There was also a courtship called “grabbing clothes”. Near a stream or a watering hole, a young man grabbed the girl's dress with his hand so that she would listen to his confessions. If the girl was against it, she pulled out and went on about her business. If it was pleasant for her to listen, she only pretended that she was trying to pull the dress out of the warrior's fingers in order to listen to him for a longer time and stand next to him.

Sometimes courtship was limited to the fact that a guy in the best clothes, on a horse with a richly decorated harness, rode here and there in front of the beauty's tipi, hoping to attract her attention and, most importantly, impress her family with his prey.

Sometimes it came to a premarital relationship, and if the young man's love was not strong, he could abandon the girl who could not keep her honor and dignify her in a song, putting there all the affectionate words that she said to him. It never came to violence within the tribe: they could kill for it. But only if the girl herself did not break any of the harsh laws, she did not go to wander in vain alone in the forest, for example.

The period of courtship after the girl was recognized as an adult lasted for several years. On average, girls got married at fifteen, their grooms were about twenty: a young man who had never shown himself in a military campaign or especially a large hunt had no right to flirt with girls.

Despite the prohibition, the girls sometimes exchanged a word or two with the youth, most often at the stream, where they took water and where the children loved to play. But woe to her if later she chose another: from her words the offended young man will compose a song, and everyone will know that there is a deceiver in the tribe. Although it was already possible to figure out the windy girl from a recent wedding, the rejected warrior could increase her humiliation by naming her name in the song (which, of course, most did not resort to, because it dropped the guy's face too).

Over time, the umbrella borrowed from the European peoples began to be used for the same purpose as the blanket: those standing under it could talk together. Umbrellas were appreciated as large, behind which you can properly hide. They were decorated with feathers, fur, beads, ribbons and even bells, and could be painted on the inside or outside. The bells on the umbrella had their own purpose: no one could overhear if the girl was not answering the young man.

Sometimes the girl was so in love that she secretly gave the young man a gift, most often embroidered moccasins. This was very condemned, it was believed that this is how she buys his love. But the same gift from the sisters or the mother of the girl was considered honorable: it was presented as a sign that the family would accept matchmaking favorably.

The matchmaking was pretty straightforward. The young man brought gifts to the girl's dwelling. If the family did not accept them immediately, he could add something else during the day. But if nothing changed with sunset, this meant a refusal. If the family was glad to see the young man as the father of their grandchildren (among the Indians, the children belonged to the mother's family), then she took the gifts and, in turn, presented the groom. After the exchange of gifts, a wedding was arranged.

The young man did not always refuse his beloved if his matchmaking was rejected. He could negotiate an escape with her. Running off on horseback with the girl, the young warrior always took off and threw back his moccasins: this was what they did with the kidnapped against their will, so that they would not run away. Thus, the young man protected the honor of the girl, shifting all the blame onto himself: they say, not an escape, but theft. The fugitives sought shelter with relatives in other camps.

As a rule, such difficulties were only with the first matchmaking. Due to the short life expectancy of most men, polygamy was relatively common among the Indians. The second wife, the Indian took the wife's own or cousin, based on who the wife would agree with on the joint ownership of the man. In the end, a man by and large does not care, but a woman is pleased. The main condition for acquiring a second or third wife was the ability to feed both her and the children. Often, the warrior also took his daughter-in-law as a second wife, if his brother died - this was considered in some way a duty; if his wife died, the warrior tried next time to marry one of her sisters, so that all his children belong to the same clan and so that the new wife would treat them kindly: they are not strangers, after all.

The matchmaking of the widower to the widow was simply taking place. He could go to visit her and make a speech about the fact that his tipi lacks master's hands, and his mother is old; besides, he and his mother do not eat all the meat that he brings from the hunt and he does not mind feeding someone else. If the woman agreed, she replied that she would not mind the man hunting for her sake; after that they moved in and were considered husband and wife.

Among the Indians of Central and South America, marriages were more often agreed upon by their parents, so that flirting between young people was more secretive and less ritualized than among the North American Indians. But among poor families, lovers' escapes were quite common, which forced relatives to play a wedding after the beginning of their married life. The rich girls, of course, were sternly guarded. So that the noble girl did not look at the man was watched so strictly that the girls were severely punished even for the fact that she simply looked up from the ground or work in her hands.

If the Aztecs had polygamy, then the Maya family unit usually consisted of one wife and one husband, and Mayan wives were famous for their jealousy. The marriageable age of the Maya dropped significantly after the conquest by the Spaniards, they became the norm for a bride of twelve or thirteen years old, but before that he kept, like all Indians of the northern American continent, as well as Quechua (Incas) at fifteen or sixteen. Otherwise, the girl was treated just as strictly, and she could not raise her eyes to the boy or man without being denounced as shameless. Young people flirted only in whispers, and their parents entered into marriages of their choice.

In Quechua, marriages were sometimes concluded not even at the request of the parents, but by the decision of the community: they say, the age has approached, let's create a social unit. But the Incas were generally a very totalitarian, albeit socially oriented, state. As for their jungle neighbors, the relationship between boys and girls varied from tribe to tribe, from complete freedom in premarital affairs to the austerity of the Aztecs and Mayans.

The life of the Indians is both similar and unlike the life of Europeans. Why serving is a holiday and other subtleties from the life of women of the Inca empire is difficult to understand, but you can, if you try.