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

Abstract

Lover's Leap tales in the American Midwest exist in areas with the appropriate geographical features (tall cliffs or waterfalls) and local communities to populate the story's cast of characters. Leland Payton and Crystal Payton have been photographing the Ozark Mountain region for at least 50 years, documenting a range of Lover's Leaps, along with their other interests, within the local natural environment. The research for this book grew out of their larger interest in the connections between regional history and the environment as a way for them to contextualize patterns they had found within the collected stories and ephemera. The authors wanted their book to demonstrate not only the dissemination of the tales from their original Romantic European origins, but also how these stories could be used to discuss American geography.The book is divided into chapters, predominantly organized by geographical region. The narrative starts along the Mississippi. This region provides many locations ideal for the emergence of a Lover's Leap tale, and the regional commentaries provided by Mark Twain offer a balance of detail and cynicism that Payton and Payton embrace. The authors frequently return to stories collected along the Mississippi while contrasting them with those associated with the American South, Midwest, West, and New England—focusing especially on places, such as Niagara Falls, where the local tourism provides vibrant elaborations on the theme. While most of the characters within the Lover's Leap stories are Native American, the authors are quick to clarify that they are not trying to make a statement about Native American cultures.Payton and Payton's research materials came from three sources: the photographs they took themselves of the geographic phenomena; the ephemera, photographs, and souvenirs gathered over many years of exploring flea markets and auctions; and the written texts—published and archival—that retell and disseminate local stories. The authors acknowledge that the majority of their sources (both narrative and pictorial) were produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by white men, and that the tales themselves match stories from Western Europe more so than any Native American source. However, their choice to reproduce the original authors’ texts without conducting additional ethnographic research or independent analysis remains problematic. The racial and gender-based stereotyped language that was prevalent when these texts were written needs to be contextualized. Payton and Payton do not choose to situate the terminology they perpetuate within its historical context, nor do they provide acknowledgment that the language used has had derogatory meanings throughout history. The book would also benefit greatly from the application of some theories of story transmission developed by folklorists and from a stronger acknowledgment of how the original texts essentialize the cultures described.The final chapter, “An Edgy Mythos,” connects some of the recurring tropes and motifs found in the variants to the relevant geographical features. Payton and Payton finally apply their own analysis to support their argument alluded to earlier, that the Lover's Leap stories convey cultural knowledge about the interaction between white settlers and their environment, framed as a description of a spurious local Native American culture. The result is still the oversimplification of Indigenous people and their motives, but with additional context to allow the reader to develop their own conclusions. This final chapter demonstrates the level of analysis the authors could have achieved with more investigation of individual themes rather than the desire to reproduce the vast volume of available sources.The strength of this book arises from the photographs (original and reproduced), ephemera, and other visuals provided on nearly every page. Payton and Payton are experienced photographers and material-culture collectors, and the care they put into the curation of their collection is evident. However, the sheer volume of the visuals sometimes diminishes the argument that the images are intended to support because the captions do not always parallel the written text. The book would have benefitted from a more thorough analysis of this visual record, perhaps with more detailed connections, support, and context—and fewer repetitive textual examples.The volume itself is beautifully formatted, and the collection of photographs and ephemera deserves further study. Payton and Payton intentionally and explicitly avoid cultural theory in order to keep their text accessible to those readers without an academic background. However, their open disdain for “those who ‘theory’ for a living” (p. 109) results in apathy toward some of the scholarly work—both great and humble—that could have helped shape this extensive but somewhat disconnected assortment of ephemera and nineteenth-century newspaper articles into a solid exploration of local history and folklore.