Lover's Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco

Lovers leap worldwide. In America the leaping was usually done by a love-shattered Indian woman. There are hundreds of dramatic cliffs where a dusky maiden is said to have plunged to her death after her father, the chief, demanded she wed an unloved brave. Thousands of poems, stories, and newspaper accounts chronicle these dolorous events. Millions of postcards and souvenirs have been manufactured picturing the often-spectacular bluffs where those princesses leaped. Folklorists have largely ignored these legends. Understandably so they are fakelore and do not resemble Indian traditions. Mark Twain found Lover s Leaps perversely amusing, and so do the Paytons.