# The Indian Princess legend **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [August 28, 2025, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552 "2025-08-28T16:42:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/21 "2025-08-29T01:43:44Z")
“Princess?” He’ll no. My great-grandmother was a horrible person, a gangster goupie like [Billie Frechette](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Frechette) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/22 "2025-08-29T05:50:59Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Running Bear loved little White Dove. (1959) Yeah, immediately earwormed into my brain upon reading the OP. God help me, it was the Pat Boone version. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/23 "2025-08-29T05:55:53Z")
Years back, my Mother in Law was enthralled by the whole Ancestry and similar genetic testing. And of course, it was not as accurate then, so she was thrilled to find some small amount of Polynesian ancestry and played it up. She bought everyone in the family kits, to which I responded “Mine is going to be VERY boring, or someone’s in trouble.” So she, my FiL, and my wife have very traditional American Mutt Mixes (mostly Nordic Europeans, some Celt, and a lot of tiny pieces of other European). Mine? 99+% Ashkenazi Jews from Central to Eastern Europe. Genetically, I’m a very boring monoculture. Back to the OP - yeah, most of these stories don’t pass the smell test. Sure, I’m sure some percentage of the stories at least meet the Hollywood definition of “based on a real story”, but that’s because humans be humans. Despair over failed, unrequited, or deceased loves/crushes and self-destructive behavior is not exactly _rare_. And everyone loves to share these stories. But for the Princess in the family tree, I bet it’s _often_ (note the qualifier) about Disney-fying the heck out of stories. No one wants to mention that grandpa 8x removed had a semi-slave native wife, so of course it was a “Princess” that he saved, or who was on the run from her disapproving parents, or some other pretty story. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/24 "2025-08-29T10:58:44Z")
Actually a lot of people who think they have a Native American ancestor have found out they actually have a black ancestor instead. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/25 "2025-08-29T11:11:44Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > Creve Coeur, Missouri; The lake and surrounding area I’m from San Francisco but I’ve been there many times. I used to travel to Maryland Heights several times a year. I’ve been to that lake several times. Interesting and good to know! Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/26 "2025-08-29T13:53:49Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > … it really should be named Leech Lake, based on the number of leeches on our legs. See, nature’s scarier than any legend. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/27 "2025-08-29T15:38:23Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > She lept from multiple places? It’s a quantum effect. Nobody was observing her at the time… ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/28 "2025-08-29T15:48:40Z")
It turns out that the idea of an “Indian Princess” may just be a nasty little European stereotype. [Indian princess - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_princess) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/29 "2025-08-29T15:56:29Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > She lept from multiple places? Wow!! It was the plains. A high cliff is only about four feet. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/30 "2025-08-29T23:36:01Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > But for the Princess in the family tree, I bet it’s _often_ (note the qualifier) about Disney-fying the heck out of stories. No one wants to mention that grandpa 8x removed had a semi-slave native wife, so of course it was a “Princess” that he saved, or who was on the run from her disapproving parents, or some other pretty story. Come to think of it, even if she wasn’t a “princess”, whatever that means, it does always seem to be a white man with a native wife. Which probably does reflect some very squicky power imbalances, at the least. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/31 "2025-09-05T20:27:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Come to think of it, even if she wasn’t a “princess”, whatever that means, it does always seem to be a white man with a native wife. That’s because a white woman with a native husband would be expected to be with the tribe. And a white woman without a husband and a native child might struggle to get married to a white man. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/32 "2025-09-06T00:57:02Z")
Mary Jemison said one reason she chose to stay with the Seneca instead of getting repatriated was because she wasn’t sure if her children would be accepted in the white world. (She was a famous captive who ended up living the rest of her life - 75 years - with the Seneca). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/33 "2025-09-06T18:40:04Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It turns out that the idea of an “Indian Princess” may just be a nasty little European stereotype. [Indian princess - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_princess) The Wikipedia article is quite right about Europeans trying to shoehorn American Indian society into the European mold. Many years ago I researched the case of Weequehela, a sachem of the Lenni Lenape that I mistakenly believed to have lived in my NJ home town (he actually lived some distance away). The early colonial accounts called him “The Indian King”, figuring that, because he was the leader of the group, he must be a “King”. Of course, the rules, powers, and responsibilities of a sachem are totally unlike those of a KIng (or a governor, or a mayor). But Europeans not only liked having things stated in their terms, they also liked having one person to deal with for disputes, land sales, and the like. It would have been ludicrous to call one of his daughters a “princess”. Misleading as all get-out. I wrote a play about Weequehela. And later the definitive article on him for _New Jersey History_ magazine. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2025, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552/34 "2025-09-12T02:24:42Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > humans be humans. Despair over failed, unrequited, or deceased loves/crushes and self-destructive behavior is not exactly _rare_. I wonder how far the template for those ‘Indian Princess & settler’ tales stretches back in time, passing through generations of storytellers, each adapting details to fit their local milieu. The basic story seems remarkably similar to the ‘Princess & Cowherd’ story that is the basis for explaining the prominence of the Milky Way in the night sky in mid-summer: _-±_-+\*-+ Daughter of a guy-in-charge falls in love with a lowly guy (shepherd, garbage picker, fur-trapper, foreigner, whatever) and when the guy-in-charge finds out he forbids the relationship. Daughter whines and complains until daddy relents and allows them to meet at the river – on opposite sides – one day of each month. [In some versions, lover-boy tries to swim across and gets swept away; in other versions, lover-boy just doesn’t show up.] On the seventh day of the seventh month, princess doesn’t get to see her boyfriend. [In some versions, she throws herself into the river; in other versions, she stays at the river’s edge and dies. The point is to emphasize her devotion. In other versions, she lives and goes into a depression.] The god(s) [or daddy/guy-in-charge] take pity and create a magical bridge (a cloudy white arc in the night sky) on the seventh day of the seventh moon each year so the lovers [or their spirits] can be together for their one special night. _-+_-+\*-+ Obviously, my condensed summarization doesn’t do justice to the splendor and romance of the actual tales. I first learned about the tale when I was teaching English in Japan, where the Tanabata festival is still observed in July (or August, depending where you are). Looking up Tanabata, I learned it is called the _Tale of the Star-Crossed Lovers_ in western interpretations. I later discovered there are modern Tanabata festivals around Los Angeles and Orange counties in California and, still later, I learned that the tale is actually a Chinese import (probably from when Japan was a tributary state) to Japan. And it was quite interesting to read the story that Barry Hughart built around the tale for his Bridge of Birds, one of three books he wrote in his ‘China that never was’ realm, but by that time I knew the tale and was seeing its elements through the pieces of Hughart’s novel. To be honest, that kind of ruined the enchantment of his rendition for me. The basic template really seems to stretch back into super-ancient pre-Chinese culture from long before anyone ever thought about unifying all those disparate cultures into a single empire. If that’s the case, I’d wonder if the template can be found in Ainu, Inuit, or even Hmong or Burmese culture. –G! That Cliff wasn’t a high precipice. It was just the guy’s name. And she wasn’t throwing herself OFF… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-indian-princess-legend/1022552.md?page=1)