What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

Is it not well that the white race should learn to observe the things of Nature? We have a few nature writers: Thoreau, John Burroughs, Olive Thorne Miller, Elizabeth Grinnell, John Muir, Ernest Seton Thompson, Wm. J. Long, and Theodore Roosevelt, but why should we need nature books? We have the whole field of Nature for our own; every page is open to us, and the need of these books is proof that we have not, and do not, take the trouble to read Nature for ourselves. The Indian does better than this. He is a personal student. He finds joy and mental development in the results of his own observation, and until the white race learns his lesson, it will be behind him in its joy in Nature, its wisdom gained from Nature, in the physical health, vigor, and strength that Nature always gives to her devotees, and in the true art development that alone can come from familiarity with Nature in all her varying moods.

CHAPTER XXV
THE INDIAN AND RELIGIOUS WORSHIP

Another thing that the civilized of this age may well learn from the Indian is intense earnestness and sincerity in all matters of religion. It is a painful thing for me to go into many of our city churches. Well-dressed women and girls and young men will sit and whisper through even the most sacred parts of the service. Indeed, it is the exception, not the rule, that I ever go to a service without being outraged by some such exhibition of rudeness, ill manners, and irreverence. This kind of thing is unknown with the Indian. Religion is a serious thing. Fun is fun, and when he goes in for fun he does it with thoroughness and completeness; but when his religious instincts are called upon, he puts aside all fun, and enters into the spirit of the occasion with becoming reverence and solemnity. It is civilized people who go into churches of other faiths than their own and gape and “gawp” around, whispering the while to one another at the strange things they see. Protestants are particularly guilty of this serious vice. Roman Catholics are so trained to attend to their own devotions, and to be devout in the house of God, that they pay no attention to one another, but Protestants will go to a Catholic church, or one of some other denomination than their own, and behave in a manner that I would never insult the Indians by calling “savage” or “uncivilized.” An Indian will not even set foot on the top of one of the underground kivas where religious ceremonies of one clan are going on to which he does not belong. I do not ignore the fact that this reserve comes from superstitious fear lest some harm befall him, and this fear, perhaps, is not good. But whether from fear or not, the reverence for the sacred place and the ceremonies going on is refreshing and gratifying. Especially so is it to me after seeing, week after week, a crowd of so-called civilized young men (and old) lounging around a church door, sometimes smoking, making comments upon the people entering the church. I have as little toleration for the acts of these young men who thus selfishly rob people of their comfort and destroy their religious feeling as I would have for any one who would laugh at sorrow, or make a mock of the grief of the bereaved. And my feeling extends also to the officials of the church who will permit such outrageous conduct. Churches are for the education of all the people in religious and higher things. How can youth be educated in higher things when the very precincts of the church are allowed to be used by them for acts of discourtesy, rudeness, and selfish disregard for the thoughts and rights of others? With the Indians these things never occur. In looking at ceremonies in which they have no part, their manner betokens the profoundest respect and reverence. If not for the worship itself, it is yet shown to the feelings of those who do worship. I have photographs in my collection of Indian youths standing at the door of a Christian church while the priest within intoned the mass, or performed some part of the appointed ritual. The rapt expression of intent earnestness and seriousness is so far removed from the flippant, indifferent, careless expression and attitude of many young men of my own race that I long for the latter to know somewhat of the feeling and reverence of the former.

Then in the religious ceremonies in which they take part, their demeanor is remarkable in its intent seriousness and earnestness. I have seen Indians at their shrines, when they thought they were entirely alone, pray with an agony of seriousness and fervor that I have never seen equalled or at least surpassed. The priests of the Snake Dance and the Lelentu (prayers for rain and that water will flow freely into the springs) are as earnest and sincere and devout as the most consecrated Christian minister or priest I ever saw. And the dancers of the Acomas, Lagunas, Hopis, Navahos, Zunis, etc., enter into these, their religious ceremonies, with an earnestness and reverence that put to shame the flippant, bustling, looking-around, whispering congregations of many of our so-called Christian churches.

Nor is this all. The Indian’s every-day attitude is one of reverence for the Powers Above. He does everything with these before his mind. The first thing he does on awakening is to propitiate all the powers of the five or seven cardinal points. When the sun rises he makes his offering to the powers behind it, that control and direct it, that it may be a blessing throughout the day. Indeed, every act of his life may be said to have a religious thought attached to it, so powerfully is the religious instinct developed within him. If you offer him a cigarette he will propitiate the Powers Above and Around and Below before he gives himself up to the full enjoyment of it. He does this, however, with such apparent unconcern that the stranger would never dream of it, even though he were looking straight at him. But the knowing will understand. When he sees the Indian quietly blow a puff of smoke to the East, he knows that is for the purpose of reminding the good and evil powers that reside there that the smoker wishes their good influences to rest upon him, or, at least, that the evil influences shall pass him by. And the same thing when the smoker puffs to the North, the West, the South, and the Here. For the Navaho Indian believes that there are powers that need propitiating just here, while the Hopis add the powers of the Above and the Below, thus making seven cardinal points.

The secret prayers and rites of the underground kivas, or the medicine hogans of Hopi and Navaho are marvels of sincerity, earnestness, and reverence. One is impressed whether he understands them or not, and the white man comes away, or at least I do, with this feeling, viz., that I would to God the white race, so long as they worship at all, would do so with such outward decorum, reverence, and earnestness that would imply their real inward belief that the thing is more than a meaningless, perfunctory ceremony that they must go through.

Another remarkable thing I would that the white race would learn from the Indian is his habit of teaching the victim of a misfortune of birth that his misfortune is a mark of divine favor. Let me explain fully. A hunchback or a dwarf among the Indians is not made the butt of rude wit, ghastly jokes, or of cruel treatment, as is generally the case with such a one of our own race, but is treated with special consideration and kindness. I knew a Mohave boy who was humpbacked when born. The shaman or medicine man explained how the deformity came. He was a special child, a gift from the gods above. He came from the Above to the Here on the exquisite pathway of a rainbow. But, unfortunately, the rainbow rested over a very sharp, rugged mountain peak, which the gods did not see, and, as the child slid down to the earth, his poor, little, naked back caught on the sharp peak and was thus deformed. With such a story of his origin his parents were made happy, and as he grew older, he was treated with kindness and consideration by his boy companions. Now, while I would not gain this end by the superstitious story of the Mohave medicine man, I would that we could in some way teach our boys to look with compassion upon the misfortune of such as happen to be afflicted at birth, or to be light-witted, or in some way not the equal of the majority.

If an Indian be afflicted with hysteria, or fits of any kind, he is better treated as the result of his affliction rather than worse. Too often the white race makes these afflictions the cause of brutal and indifferent treatment, and adds sorrow to the already overburdened and distressed souls of the suffering.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE INDIAN AND IMMORTALITY

To the materialist immortality is a foolish dream, to the agnostic an unjustified human craving, to the simple Christian a belief, and to the transcendentalist a confident hope, but to the Indian it is as positive an assurance as is life. The white race has complicated its belief in the future life with many theological dogmas. The Roman Catholic church has its purgatory, as well as its paradise and hell; the first as a place of purging for the sins committed in the body and that must be burned away, the second the abode of the blest, and the third the place into which the damned are cast. The Seventh Day Adventists believe that only those who are saved by “the blood of Christ” and obedience to his commands are blessed with the gift of immortal life. They contend it is a free gift as an act of God’s grace and is not inherent in the soul or spirit of mankind. Those who refuse to accept salvation by the vicarious atonement of Christ, they believe, will be annihilated. The Presbyterian believes that a certain number of mankind are foreordained for salvation and heaven, and another number for damnation and hell, from the foundation of the world. The Universalist believes that all men will ultimately be saved and therefore enjoy heaven, whilst others have a belief in a “conditional” immortality.

The Indian believes in immortality without any admixture of complex theological ideas. His is a simple faith which he accepts as he accepts life. He believes that when he dies his spirit goes to its new life just as at birth he came into this life. And he believes that all the objects he used on earth—food, clothing, articles of adornment, baskets, horses, saddles, blankets—have a spirit-life as well as he has. Hence, when one dies, his friends throw upon his funeral pyre his clothing, blankets, and other personal belongings, utensils for his comfort, food for his nourishment on the way to the “under world,” or land of the future, and strangle his horse that its spirit may aid him on his journey. When death approaches he faces it with calmness, equanimity and serenity. Fearless and unafraid he awaits the coming of the last great enemy. In effect, he cries out with Browning:

No shirking for him; as calmly as Socrates took the bowl of fatal hemlock, the Indian awaits death and proudly passes on to the new life. Those who are left behind may wail for their loss, but the one who departs asks for and receives no sympathy.

Now, it is this simple acceptation of death as a natural thing that I would have the white race learn. And yet it can never come to us as an act of simple faith as it is with the Indian. Our civilization has spoiled us for “simple faith.” That is practically impossible, save to a few souls who, unlike the rest of us, have “kept themselves unspotted from the world” of speculative thought, or theological dogma. It can come (and does with many) as the result of religious training, or as it did to Browning and Whitman. What wonderfully different minds these two men had. One an aristocrat, the other a democrat, yet both full of love for mankind, and each teaching with vigor and power the Fatherhood of God, the real brotherhood of man, and the immortality of the soul. Read Browning’s Prospice, part of which I have already quoted, Evelyn Hope, Abt Vogler, and these three stanzas with which he opens his La Saziaz, and elsewhere calls a Pisgah Sight:

Compare these utterances with Whitman’s rugged and forceful words:

Again, in his To One Shortly to Die, what a triumphant note is in the last two lines:

How perfectly Indian, this attitude, this refusal to be sorry, and to offer congratulations rather than regrets. In his Night on the Prairies his perfect assurance as to the future is clearly expressed, and while measuring himself with the great thoughts of space and eternity that fill him as he gazes upon the myriads of globes above, he exclaims:

In one poem he speaks of “awaiting death with perfect equanimity,” and in another says:

And the reason for all this restfulness as to Death and the Future is expressed in his Assurances:

“I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for. (Did you think life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all life, is not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points.

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere, at any time, is provided for in the inherences of things.

I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.”

So, reader, I care not how it comes into your soul, so that you have it there, a rich and precious possession, this living, active, potential belief in immortality. If you know you are now, and that you will never end, you will find that life itself becomes more enlarged and dignified. You will not be content with mere earthly aims, you will not rest satisfied to be a mere money-getter, but, realizing the immensity of your own capacities and powers, you will reach out for the eternal things, the realities that abide forever. For Joaquin Miller never wrote a truer word than when he said:

This forever settles a thoughtful man’s conception of mere acquisitiveness. Such gatherings-together are unworthy the soul that feels and knows its own immortality. It needs a larger aim, a more worthy object.

Another thing in connection with what we call death, the white race may well learn from the Indian. How often does press and pulpit expend itself in finding superlatives to pour out in lavish eulogy over the dead, who, while alive, never did a thing to win the love of their fellows. Such eulogy is unknown among the Indians. The “preacher of an Indian funeral sermon” would no more dare wrongfully praise or laud his subject than he would falsely execrate him. He must speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and while he is not called upon to expatiate upon the wrong-doings, the foibles or weaknesses of his subject, he must say no word of praise that is not justly earned and strictly true.

If this law were applied to the white race, what different funeral sermons and orations we should hear and read; and what different inscriptions we should read upon the tombstones found in our grave-yards.

CHAPTER XXVII
VISITING THE INDIANS

Occasionally I meet with people who would like to visit real Indians in their real homes,—not the dressed-up Indians in a made home, like those of the Midway Plaisance of the World’s Fair or of a “Wild West” show, and they ask me how they can do so. To the ordinary traveler of to-day, who requires all the comforts of a Pullman and a dining car, and who is not willing to forego them for the hardships of a camping-out trip, my advice is don’t, although the hardships are more so in name than in fact. If one likes old clothes, fresh air, the great outdoors, lots of sunshine, desert roads, and meals al fresco,—sleeping at night under the stars,—this is just the country for such things. Given a good team, a careful driver who can cook “frontier style,” and an agreeable traveling companion, and you will have a new thrill—no matter what the weather is. Five dollars a day each person will cover average cost of outfit; meals extra.

Yet there are some Indians who may be seen without leaving the luxuries of our modern civilization. Two great railway systems in our Southwest pass through the regions where live the Indians to whom I have referred in the foregoing pages. These are popularly known as the “Santa Fe” and the “Southern Pacific.”

In crossing the continent from Chicago to the Pacific Coast on the Santa Fe route, one strikes the “Indian country,” to which I refer, about half a day before reaching Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here is what might be termed “the heart of the Pueblo Indian country.” The word “pueblo” is Spanish for “town,” so the name merely means the stay-at-home town Indians as distinguished from the nomad or wandering tribes of the great plateaus.

At Albuquerque one may see, in Fred Harvey’s collection in the Mission-style depot, a rare and precious gathering of Indian baskets, blankets, silverware, etc., that is one of the finest in the West. It ranks with the highest, and was largely gathered and placed under the personal direction of Dr. George A. Dorsey, the eminent ethnologist of the Field Columbian Museum. Nearly all the pueblos may be reached with this city as a radiating center, though Taos and the Indian villages of the northern Rio Grande valley are more accessible from Santa Fe. Isleta and Laguna are passed a few miles further west. A three hours’ drive from Laguna, by way of the Enchanted Mesa, brings you to the sky city of Acoma. Zuni is a day’s stage ride south of Gallup, New Mexico. At Winslow, or Canyon Diablo, Arizona, one may leave the railway for the 70 or 90 mile ride across the Painted Desert to the region of the Hopis, the snake-dancing Indians to whom I have often referred. At Williams, a little further west, on the branch line to the Grand Canyon, one may visit the Havasupais, and at Kingman, the Wallapais. At Needles, on the Colorado River, the boundary line between Arizona and California, one may see the Mohaves, and on the river, reached by boat from Needles, some forty miles below, are the Chemehuevis. In California, on the San Diego branch of the Santa Fe, one may reach various villages of Mission Indians; Pala, Rincon, and several others from Oceanside; and San Ysabel, Mesa Grande, Los Coyotes, etc., from San Diego by team to Warner’s Ranch. Saboba is reached on the San Jacinto branch, and Temecula on the Temecula branch.

The Santa Fe passenger department publishes a beautifully illustrated and well written book on the Indians of the Southwest, and it is well worth sending fifty cents to their general offices in Chicago for a copy.

The Southern Pacific also passes through a country where many Indians reside. The Apaches are reached from several of their Arizona stations, and the Pimas and Maricopas from Phœnix. At Aztec a stage takes one to Palomas, where an interesting band of Apaches are to be seen. The Indian reservation for the Yumas is just across the railway bridge at Zuma, and from Mecca, near the Salton Sea, one may reach the desert Indian villages of Martinez, Agua Dulce, Santa Rosa, etc. Palm Springs is the station for the Palm Springs Indians, five miles away, and at Porterville, north of Los Angeles, one starts for the drive to the Yokuts and other basket-making Indians.

This brief chapter makes no pretense to full treatment. It is merely a suggestion of help to those who wish to follow the Indian to his real home.

CHAPTER XXVIII
CONCLUSION

In the foregoing chapters I have attempted to present in helpful form ideas that have slowly sifted into my own mind as my contact with the Indian has become less formal and restrained. In my case “familiarity” has not “bred contempt.” I have learned many, and to me most important, lessons. In the hurry and whirl of our money-mad age and our machine-driven civilization, we have scarce time to sit down calmly and contemplate anything, hence my earnest plea for a return to the simple things, to the outdoors, to the quiet contentment of the Indian. Doubtless I have often said things both crudely and harshly, but I can truthfully affirm that I have never intended to be harsh, though I am less careful that my utterances be polished and refined than that they should find lodgment in earnest hearts.

To those who are honest and sincere in their desire to get the good out of what I have said, the flaws in my work will be generously passed by, and kindly disregarded. I have felt too intensely in the writing of some of these chapters to be able to judge what I have written by the cool, critical standard of the rhetorician. I have learned from the Indian that the real thing to be desired in oratory is to get one’s thought into the other man’s mind and heart so that it will influence his action. This has been my aim in writing these pages; so, in conclusion,

I thank thee, dusky brother of the plains, the mountains, the forests, and the canyons, for this lesson and all the other lessons you have taught me. I am grateful for the lessons of the higher civilization. I prize and treasure them, but equally am I under obligation to thee, thou red-skin, for recalling to me some primitive principles which civilization ignores at its peril.