My hometown of Spirit Lake is supposedly named after the legend of an “Indian Princess”(Indians have princesses??) who fell in love with a forbidden “brave from another tribe”, so they decided to meet in the middle of the lake for so dumb reason but they both drowned and haunt the lake to this day. How many variations of this “Indian Princess” tale are there?
I’ve heard it about a high cliff where the princess supposedly leapt from. I even think from multiple places.
In song, Running Bear loved little White Dove. (1959)
She lept from multiple places? Wow!!
In terms of the question of whether there were such thing as “princesses”, there were hundreds of different tribes with all sorts of political and inheritance structures. For whatever you might view as being the defining characteristic of a “king”, there was probably some tribe with some chief that fit that paradigm, and so any daughter of his would have been a “princess”.
More widely, human nature is that some people are going to be more influential than others, and there will be political advantages to marrying into that family. You may as well call the daughter of wealthy industrialist a “princess”, unless you subscribe to the idea that the royal family has to descend from the gods. There were probably lots of women who could, under one definition or another, be reasonably titled a princess by outsiders.
And, I’d expect, that there were lots of rivalries and long-standing enmities among various families and tribes since, again, we’re ultimately talking about human beings. I’d expect that there were lots of frowned upon, scandalous, and forbidden relationships through the millenia.
Of course, the other great truth in life is that nearly all legends ain’t. So…princess or no, forbidden love or no, it’s still probably just some pond.
You beat me to it. I was going to post, ‘Did she climb back up?’ 
Anything worth doing is worth doing well…
Creve Coeur, Missouri. The princess fell in love with a French fur trapper, who did not love her. Heartbroken, she threw herself off a bluff into the lake. The lake and surrounding area was named for this event – creve coeur being French for “broken heart.”
This is a ‘Measure Twice, Jump Once’ situation.
Devils Tower: Lakota legends tell of seven girls playing who prayed for help when chased by bears, and a sacred hill rose to protect them, leaving the claw marks on its sides today.
Not exactly princesses, but probably because no white man thought about it.
Not one of these “legends” I’ve ever encountered pass the “smell” test. I don’t think there’s a legend about a lovelorn Native American woman fitting the mold of these stories that derives from anything told by members of a real Native American Nation. They all have the air of stories made up by tour guides to beguile tourists out on a summer vacation.
I think Kurt Russell’s character tells a similar story in the movie Overboard.
Yes, he does. Love that movie. Arturo and Katarina…
At the end of the movie Kurt and Goldie recreate the scene.
I suspect the story dates back to a 16th Century Native American storyteller called Shakey Spear.
There are two lakes not far from where I grew up in South.
Punished Woman Lake is named for a Sioux Indian legend that tells of a young woman who ran away with her forbidden lover, defying her father’s wishes for her to marry a clan chief. When the woman and her lover were returned to the tribe’s camp along the lake’s shore, the enraged chief killed his opponent, and then shot an arrow through the heart of the young woman.
It’s next to Enemy Swim Lake, which has its own legend. As a child, we went wading there, only to discover it really should be named Leech Lake, based on the number of leeches on our legs.