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The Doors first released "Indian Summer" on their 1970 LP Morrison Hotel, but that song -- or part of it -- was already 4 years old.* "Indian Summer" sounds out of place amid the raucous strut and swagger of "Roadhouse Blues" and the others. Only "Blue Sunday" -- inseparable from the cynical "Peace Frog" -- echoed a message of love. But those two entwined songs juxtaposed where The Doors were in 1970 and not four years earlier.

"Indian Summer" is a lone piece of unguarded sensitivity. If you listen, you can hear the musical strains of "The End" and "When The Music's Over" -- songs recorded in the band's initial flowering from 1966 to 1967. The rest of Morrison Hotel belongs to the post-Summer of Love era -- after all of the violence of 1968-69. But "Indian Summer" can't be a reference to the Summer of Love because it antedates it by a year.*

Allegedly, the song's lyrics were wholly Morrison's and were rooted in his high school noodlings. So who were they meant for...Pamela Courson? No, I think "Blue Sunday" was her song -- but not "Indian Summer." I think it was an early version of his paean to all women (or at least his women) -- his love song writ larger -- "L.A. Woman."

In any case, "Indian Summer" was a piece of The Doors' early history, preserved and released on their penultimate studio LP.  At this point in time those songs all run together and may sound old. But back then that song was like a gorgeous summer day which arrived a couple years late in the fall of the 1960's.
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*My copy from iTunes, available on a 40th anniversary rerelease came labelled "Indian Summer (8/19/66 Vocal)."

This video purports to be an original 1966 version of "Indian Summer" however the audio quality is so poor that it's difficult to tell which if any instrument/vocal tracks were recycled or if it was just an earlier take: