How far the sentiment of monogamy--one of the essential ingredients of
Romantic Love--had penetrated the skulls of American Indians may be
inferred from the amusing and typical details related by the historian
Parkman (_O.T._, chap. xi.) of the Dakota or Sioux Indians, among whom
he sojourned. The man most likely to become the next chief was a
fellow named Mahto-Tatonka, whose father had left a family of thirty,
which number the young man was evidently anxious to beat:

"Though he appeared not more than twenty-one years old,
he had oftener struck the enemy, and stolen more horses
and more squaws than any young man in the village. We
of the civilized world are not apt to attach much
credit to the latter species of exploits; but
horse-stealing is well-known as an avenue to
distinction on the prairies, and the other kind of
depredation is esteemed equally meritorious. Not that
the act can confer fame from its own intrinsic merits.
Any one can steal a squaw, and if he chooses afterward
to make an adequate present to her rightful proprietor,
the easy husband for the most part rests content; his
vengeance falls asleep, and all danger from that
quarter is averted. Yet this is esteemed but a pitiful
and mean-spirited transaction. The danger is averted,
but the glory of the achievement also is lost.
Mahto-Tatonka proceeded after a more gallant and
dashing fashion. Out of several dozen squaws whom he
had stolen, he could boast that he had never paid for
one, but snapping his fingers in the face of the
injured husband, had defied the extremity of his