In both men’s and women’s dress, too, something may be said on this line. The tendency of the age is to add and add and add, until we are burdened by the superfluous. Women want laces, embroideries, tucks, ruffles, pleats, and ribbons; they quilt, braid, hem, and fell to a fearful and wonderful extent,—all adding labor, trouble, and care to life, and depriving them of time that could and should be more wisely and profitably spent. No one loves to see woman or man neater or better dressed than I, but there is a point of simplicity and native dignity beyond which no one can go without getting into the realm of needless, wasteful luxury and harmful superfluity. Some men are as bad as some women, what with ties for every function and hour of the day, cuffs, collars, vests, and creased trousers, all of which must be a la mode and au fait. To me these things reveal as much non compos mentis as they do a la mode, for mind should be, and is, superior to an excess of such frivolity.

Rose Wood-Allen Chapman in Good Health has sagely written upon this subject. She well says:

“The one important thing in life is character; your own character, the character of your husband, your children, your friends. All other things should be judged by their bearing upon this important matter. Things may be delightful in themselves; but if they tend to add to your worries, if they are a barrier between you and your loved ones, if they interfere with the development of the higher faculties of your children, they become undesirable, inadvisable, and should be classed with the superfluities of life.

“The mother who prepares for her baby dainty, hand-made garments, wonderfully trimmed with lace and embroidery, in the majority of instances is depriving that child of personal love and care that rightfully belong to him. What does he care for such finery? He wants his mother’s companionship, and for himself perfect freedom for all forms of activity. To so attire him that he must be constantly cautioned, ‘Now don’t get your dress dirty,' is to interfere with one of his inalienable rights. The wise mother will make her baby’s clothes simple, to serve as a background for his infantile charms, instead of taking the attention away from him to center it upon elaborate ornamentation.

“Many housekeepers there are who bemoan their inability to keep up the interests of their girlhood. They have no time now to play the piano, to read inspiring literature, to join the club, or to enter upon any philanthropic work. They say they feel their deprivation; have they ever tried to see how many of their household tasks could be eliminated as superfluous?

“I have been in homes where there were two and sometimes three pairs of curtains at each window. The effect was rich, but one whose mind was awakened to the question of the superfluities could but think of the extra work such hangings entailed.

“Then there are the ‘cozy corners,’ the Turkish divans smothered in over-hanging draperies, which the furniture stores are so eager to urge upon their customers as ‘the very latest style.’ Such corners are gathering-places for dust, and an unnecessary addition to the work of the home.

“Heavy carpets on the floors may feel soft under foot, but they are hard to sweep, are never really clean, save after the annual beating, and so are both unhygienic and burdensome.

“Think how much less drudgery must be performed by the woman who has hard-wood or stained floors with a few medium-sized rugs! Her floors can be wiped up quickly with a damp cloth, and her rugs thoroughly cleaned with a minimum amount of effort.

“At the windows this same woman will have filmy net curtains, with ruffled border, it may be, that are ordinarily cleansed by putting them on the line where the wind can blow the dust out of them; or can easily be laundered when more thorough cleaning is desired.

“On her walls will be a few artistic pictures, with no overhanging festoons or ribbons to catch dust and add to the labor. Bric-a-brac will be conspicuous for its absence; photographs will be put away, instead of covering her dresser and the walls of her bedroom. In a word, her aim will be to have her home light, airy, artistically furnished, but in such a way as to be the least possible burden to her and to her family. Husbands and children find it hard to be careful of the things that have been bought for show. Why not dispense with them, then, and have only that which is necessary and usable?

“Many housekeepers have learned to dispense with unnecessary furnishings, but are still slaves to elaborate meals, especially when they entertain.

“It is wise, in the first place, to remember that the health of the family is conserved by simplicity in the meals. Even though they are now used to a larger variety at each meal, they can be gradually accustomed to a simple diet. No soup when there is dessert and no dessert when there is soup, is a very good rule for dinner. The other course should consist of a meat substitute and only two vegetables. A simple breakfast food, with bread and butter and fruit, is enough for the morning meal; while an equally simple supper should be entirely satisfactory.

“It is a temptation to leave the paths of simplicity when company is coming; but if we just remember that our friends come to see us, not to eat our food, we will find it easier to restrain our inclinations in this direction. Oftentimes housewives become possessed with a spirit of emulation which leads Mrs. Smith to feel that she must set forth a more elaborate meal than Mrs. Jones had served, while Mrs. Robinson in turn strives to eclipse Mrs. Smith, and as a result meals become so complicated as to be most burdensome to the hostess and almost dangerous to the guests. Let us confine our efforts to making our simple entertainment as attractive as possible, and furnishing such wit and merriment therewith, such geniality and kindliness, as shall make our guests feel that they have partaken of a feast.”

I have already, in other chapters, commented upon some of these things, as revealed in the light of the Indian’s life. Their lives are, perforce, models of simplicity, devoid of luxuries and also of superfluities. It is not my intent to suggest that we should revert to their method of living a simple and unluxurious life, but I do long with all my heart that we might take lesson from them, and find the golden mean between their life and our too complex and superfluity-laden life. If health and happiness are the ends to be attained in life they, with their rude simplicity, have surpassed us, with our elegant and ornate complexity. And for me and mine I prefer health and happiness rather than all the superfluities that a commercially-cursed, bargain-counter, curio-loving, bric-a-brac adoring, showy, shoddy civilization can give.

CHAPTER XXI
THE INDIAN AND MENTAL POISE

On a trip made recently from Yuma to the Salton Sea, down the overflow of the Colorado River, I found occasion to watch my two Indians in contrast with four white men of more than ordinary intelligence and ability. In some important things the Indians lost nothing by the comparison. Indeed, several times I called the attention of my white companions to them, and to certain characteristics which are by no means confined to them, but that belong to most Indians, and urged their emulation. Some of these will form the subject of this chapter.

One member of my party was a “reverend”—a missionary. He was a fine, open-hearted fellow whom we all liked, but every once in a while—indeed, I ought to say frequently—he would make suggestions to the Indian to go here, or go there, which finally called forth (from me) a forceful rebuke. Let me explain the situation fully. When we came to the place where the Colorado River left its banks and entered a mesquite forest, its waters were naturally much divided. As we did not know where each current led, and how soon it would spread so as to render further progress in our boats impossible, it was a situation that called for great knowledge as to determining the course of the best and deepest current, and quick decision; for, as we were carried along among mesquites, a few moments of indecision meant being thrust into a mesquite tree, perhaps, where cruel thorns spared no one, because of his indecision. Reader, do you know what a mesquite is? Its proper name should be “me scratch.” If you come within ten feet of one it verily seems to reach out for you and scratch you somewhere. Imagine your thorniest rosebush multiplied by fifty and all concentrated and condensed into one tree with thorns much longer, far more pointed, and with poison lurking on the end of them, and you have a not very much exaggerated idea of the mesquite. Now to have our missionary friend bawling out all the time, “Better go this way,” or “Better go that,” was both annoying and useless, so I finally told him I had brought the Indian because I knew that he knew a thousand-fold more of such a current and how to get through this wilderness of mesquite than I did. “And,” said I, “as far as I am concerned, I should feel it was an impertinence for me to make even a suggestion to the Indian. He knows where I guess, and yet as you know, I have had far more experience in this kind of thing than you have. Don’t you think it wiser for you to add a little more silence to your possessions?”

He was, as I have said, a royal-hearted fellow, and he took my rebuke in a manly, Christian way, for a few moments’ reflection showed him that what I said was wisdom.

Now, while these wild and foolish suggestions were being made to the Indian, what did he do? It was most interesting to me to watch him. Instead of replying and arguing with a lot of vehement words, he smiled quietly, looked at me to see if I approved of the suggestion, and when he saw my absolutely impassive face, went on following his own course. Had he been a white man—or like most white men—he would have shouted back that he was going some other way, or called his adviser a fool, or informed him that he knew his business, or some other equally agreeable thing.

This serenity of mind in the Indian is often called impassiveness or stolidity. It shows how little the critics have known of the Indian to speak thus. They are as sensitive as children, morbidly so sometimes, but they have the self-control not to show it, and in matters like this, where they are sure their knowledge is superior to that of their adviser, they go on with a proud disregard of criticism or censure.

This calmness was also shown in the face of danger. Several times we came to places where there was both difficulty and danger. We had three boats. In the first were Jim (the Indian) and myself, seeking out the way; in the second, Indian Joe and Mr. Louis Francis Brown (business manager of the Burton Holmes lectures); and in the third his reverence and two others. When we came to the thrilling places, Jim soon learned that he was to take the responsibility, save where there was time and opportunity to discuss matters with me, and with a dignified self-reliance he made his choice, and then awaited results. If they were unpleasant, as they often were, there was no murmuring, no shouting, no remonstrance. He took things as they came, and made the best of them. The second boat followed, and there was little more said there than in our boat; but from the third came a constant babble of voices, cries to do this or that, shouts of warning, remonstrance, and fault-finding. I could not help contrasting the demeanor of the Indians with that of the civilized whites, and wishing that the latter could and would learn the lesson so clearly taught.

The quickness of Jim’s observations and his decisions were remarkable, and I wished my children, and others too, might have gone to school to him for a year or two. He saw where the sand bars were that I could not see; he could tell which way the wind was blowing, when to me it seemed to be blowing several directions at once; he was generally able to tell where the largest amount of water was flowing, and only two or three times did he make a mistake so that we had to turn back. And when those times came, there was no grumbling, no murmuring, no finding fault. He accepted the disagreeable inevitable just as easily and readily as he accepted the pleasant.

This silence and serenity in the face of annoyances is a very pleasing feature of Indian life to me. What is the use of fault-finding and complaining over disagreeable things that cannot be helped? I have just had an example (and he is but one of scores that occur to my mind) of the opposite spirit shown by a very proud and haughty member of the white race. We were on the car together, coming from the East. The first time he had a meal in the dining-car he came back furious: the chicken was cooked two or three days ago, and was weeks old to begin with; all the provisions were equally bad, the service was abominable, and the charges infamous. Then the speed of the train came in for censure. They did things differently on the New York Central or the Pennsylvania, (forgetful of the fact that those roads run through thickly populated centers, and have a passenger patronage ten times as large as is possible to the western railways that pass through unsettled and barren regions). Then, though it was perfectly delicious weather, he had to kick against its being warm and disagreeable, and so on ad libitum until I was sick of him, as was everybody else in the car. In twenty-six years of association with the Indians, I never met with one such disagreeable grumbler. The white race retains that characteristic practically to itself. If things are disagreeable and can be changed, the Indian calmly and deliberately goes to work to change them. If they are unchangeable he serenely and silently bears them. It is more manly, more agreeable, more philosophical.

Time and again I have had white men with me on various trips who needed to learn this simple and useful lesson. They made of themselves intolerable nuisances by their whining, whimpering, and complaining. Those of my readers who care to read Chapter XV in my “In and Around the Grand Canyon,” and the story of the Britisher on page 18 and onward in “The Indians of the Painted Desert Region,” will see that I know that of which I speak. And these are but two experiences out of many similar ones. Yet I have been with Indians again and again in places of distress, deprivation, and danger, and in all my experiences have not heard a half hour’s unpleasant words. Once I started to explore a series of side canyons of the great Grand Canyon. My guide was Sin-ye-la, an intelligent Havasupai. We had a most arduous trip; ran out of water and food; our horses gave out and we had to catch, saddle, and ride unbroken steeds, and finally he caught a wild mule upon which we placed the pack. The horrors and anguish of that trip I have never written, yet there was not a suggestion of complaining from Sin-ye-la, until I decided to leave the canyons and go across the desert to a certain spot where he did not wish to accompany me. Even then he merely stated his case with little or no argument and when I proved obdurate, refused to accompany me, and in fifteen minutes we parted, good friends, he to go his way and I mine.

Another time, as recorded in my Canyon book, I was caught in a marble trap with Wa-lu-tha-ma, where it seemed impossible that we could ever escape. The Indian’s calmness was almost too much. He was almost as resigned as a Mahommedan who believes in Fate. Yet, though I remonstrated with him for his despairing attitude so that we eventually got out, I believe I would rather have that bravery of despair which dares to face death without complaining or whimpering, than the fault-finding, “Why did you bring me into such dangers?” or “Shall I ever get out of this horrible place?” that some white men indulge in.

When, on the Salton trip, we came to the beginning of the most dangerous part where I had been told we should go “fifty miles in fifty minutes,” and there were many rapids which would dash our boats to pieces, and where undermined cliffs, forty, fifty, and more feet high, were likely to be suddenly precipitated into the river, and might fall upon us and our boats and send us to instant destruction; when I told my Indian of these dangers he calmly looked me in the eye and answered my question, “You afraid to go, Jim?” with a counter question: “You afraid?” And when I said “No,” and answered his further “You swim?” with a “Yes!” he immediately replied; “All right, I go.”

Of course I do not wish for one moment to suggest that this virtue of courage is not the white man’s. For love of home and country white men will go to death with a smile on their lips. But in work which the world does not see, where men are simply paid two dollars a day wages, to face danger and possible death as a matter of course, this I have found rare with the white man, and very common with an Indian. The facing of danger and death is part of their every-day life. It calls for the exercise of no special virtues. Strong in body, daring in mind, fearless in soul, duty must be done and done unhesitatingly, regardless of whether danger or death are lurking near. I am free to confess this large bold faith in life and the Supreme pleases me. The man who is always seeking to guard his own life, who refuses to run any risks, who never goes except where all is safe, may be a more comfortable man to live with, but as for me, I prefer the spirit of the man who dares and trusts; the man who does the unsafe things because it is his duty to do them, and who faces death and thinks nothing of it. The man who is prodigal of his strength and courage and faith is the man who saves them. The man who is constantly watchful lest he overdo, who refuses to run any risks, who would rather run away than dare, is the one who, in the end, will be found short in manhood and worthy accomplishment.

So I emulate the Indian in these things, and seek to be like him. This prodigality and strength in work calls for more comment. Labor unions are making one of the greatest mistakes of their career in restricting the full exercise of a man’s energy. In limiting his daily output they are bucking against that which every man should strive to possess, viz., the spirit of prodigal energy in work. My Indian would row all day, and after a few hours of especially hard work I would ask if I might not relieve him. “No; like ’em,” was his reply invariably. He liked his work. It was a joy to him. What was the result? A body of tested steel; lungs equal to every demand; muscles that responded to every strain; eyes as clear as stars; brain quick and alert because of a healthy body made and kept so by hard, continuous labor. We are told that the Indians are lazy. It is not true. Some few may be, but the Indians of the Southwest do their work heartily and well, and with a prodigal energy that is as novel and startling to most white men as it is educative and suggestive to them. As for me, I have learned the lesson. When I reach a station and have time, I walk to my hotel, and refuse to allow any one to carry my usually heavy grips. I seek for the physical exercise. Many a time I arrange for an arduous exploring trip in order to compel myself to great exertions. I know that when I get started I must go on, and in the going on, though I get very weary, I know I am developing power and hoarding up health, energy, and strength for future use. A few weeks ago I started with a comrade for a few hundreds of miles of tramping and riding over the Colorado Desert, up mountain trails, through waterless wastes. My part of the journey was shortened by circumstances over which I had no control, but my assistant and artist took the whole trip, arduous and exhausting though it was, and I envied them and regretted my inability to go along.

Another thing my Indian helpers have taught me. That is a prompt readiness to obey in any service they have agreed to perform, or anything that comes legitimately in the course of their work. There is no holding back, no remonstrance, no finding fault, no crying out that they were not engaged to do this. They perform the service, not only without a murmur, but with a ready willingness that is delightful in this age when every one expects a tip for the slightest service. This comes from two things, viz., a strong, healthy body which responds willingly to any ordinary demands upon it, and a healthy state of mind which neither resents service nor wishes to measure every expenditure of energy in a monetary balance. We are making a grand mistake in basing our present-day civilization upon material wealth. “What is there in it for me?” should be more than a query applying to mere cash. What is there in it of service, of helpfulness to my fellow-man, of healthfulness to myself, of increase of my own strength and power. The men who are relied upon by employers and by the nation are not the men who have selfishly sought their own monetary gain. There is no doubt that such seekers often seem to gain and do really gain a temporary advantage; but it is not a real advantage. It is an advantage of pocket gained at a loss of manhood, physical, mental, and spiritual, and that man who is not worth more in body, mind, and soul than his pocket can never be much of a man.

CHAPTER XXII
THE INDIAN AND SELF-RESTRAINT

Few of the superior white race would think of looking to the Indian for examples of self-restraint, but I can give them here one of the most marked examples in history. Before the advent of the white man in America the various aboriginal tribes roamed over the plains, the mountains, the foothills, and in the forests, and with snare and trap, gin and bow and arrow caught or slew the game needed for food. These tribes were often hostile to each other; they trespassed on each other’s hunting-grounds, and in consequence, often fought in deadly wars which came nigh to exterminating some of them. They were not regardful, therefore, one would think, of the rights or needs of others than themselves to the game they hunted; and it is absurd (so the school-books would tell us) to assume that they would be provident or careful to preserve game for the future. Hence they would slay ruthlessly (the same authorities would doubtless declare), indifferent as to the days to come and their future needs, merely seeking food for to-day, and gorging upon it to repletion. In this case, however, the school-books would be wrong. In the hundreds or thousands of years that the Indians controlled this great continent they never once “killed out” any one of their hunting-fields.

When the white race appeared upon the scene, game of every kind,—fish, flesh, and fowl,—was plentiful. Trappers and hunters went up and down the rivers, where beaver and otter, musk and mink, lived, and through the forests where birds nested and deer, antelope, and other game browsed; climbed the mountains where bear and puma lodged, and ever their bales of skins, furs, peltries, and hides loaded the canoes and the decks of returning vessels. Here was the best proof of the Indian’s self-restraint and provident foresight for the future, in that the white man found such an abundance of all kinds of game ready to his hand.

Then came the master mind of an Astor who valued money more than the future. What did it matter to him that game of a hundred kinds disappeared from the face of the earth provided he could make a fortune? What cared he that men and women would starve in the days to come so long as he could pile up his hoard of pelts, and sell them to add to his wealth? Modern commercialism, that damned and damning spirit of our civilization that sees nothing but dollars, that would shut out the glory of the sun rather than miss the ten-cent piece close at hand, entered into the game. Then the sportsman and the pot hunter of the white race came also, and between them and the Buffalo Bills who shot down buffaloes by the thousand for food to supply the builders of the transcontinental railways, in half a generation they cleared the prairies of the millions of noble buffaloes which used to roam in vast herds, left nothing but slender bands or solitary animals of the moose and elk, and drove these into almost inaccessible solitudes for self-preservation, and nearly stripped the country of deer, antelope, wild turkeys, and sage hens. Then they passed laws to protect “game,” making a close season so that the Indians, who, in their days of freedom and wildness, needed no law but their own good sense and self-restraint, cannot now shoot at all save in the few days when the restrictions are removed. So that, practically speaking, the Indian now has no hunting-ground; he is debarred from obtaining wild game for food for himself and family, and all because of the infernal greed and equally infernal brutality of the pot-hunter. Here, then, is a national proof—for what I have said is practically true of every state in the country—that the white race has much to learn of self-restraint from the despised Indian. Self-restraint as to greed,—for, until the advent of the white, one Indian never sought to build up mere wealth at the expense of or to the injury or detriment of his fellows. This was the white man’s way, not his! He practised self-restraint, for the Indians knew and realized that if the animals were killed too closely the species would soon become extinct, and future generations, if not themselves, have to suffer.

To most people the Indian is a careless creature, content if his belly is filled to-day, improvident for the future, and therefore unwise, unthoughtful, and to be condemned. May it not be in this apparent carelessness for the future the Indian is wiser than we, that he is deliberately exercising a beneficial restraint? Think of the wild hurly-burly of our struggle to accumulate, and then consider the expense, the worry, the endless care of protecting that which we have accumulated. One far wiser than the sages of to-day once declared that we were to “take no thought for the morrow,” and in His whole teaching and life reprobated the struggle for wealth, and the life of selfish ease that comes with its attainment.

One of the greatest curses of our present age and civilization is love of ease, craving for luxury, desire to “have a good time.” We worship money because it brings these things, forgetful of the teachings of history that luxury and ease beget sensuality and vice, and these in turn beget disease, decay, and death. I am opposed to great money-getting on this account, and would not amass a fortune if I could. As for leaving large sums of money to my children, especially my sons, nothing could ever induce me to do it. If much money should ever come to me I hereby serve notice upon all concerned that I shall spend it, wisely and usefully, as my best judgment dictates, as soon as I can, and anyhow get rid of it so that no son of mine shall say that the money I left him helped him on the downward path.

The Indian knows well the lesson that physical health comes only by the exercise of the body, therefore he definitely refuses any course of life that would prevent it; he welcomes for himself, his wife, his sons, and his daughters physical work; he also knows that mental and spiritual improvement come only by the exercise of mental and spiritual faculties, and he shuns everything that stultifies them. Did he know English, he could sing with Thomas Gray:

And he puts into practical life what another of our sages well expressed when he said: “Occupation and exercise are the hand-maidens of purity and strength.” Too often we merely read these wise words. The Indian lives them. In this the white race can well imitate him. He faces hardship and danger with eagerness that thereby he may develop courage and strength. He takes his sons and punishes them in what we should call a cruel manner to develop fortitude; he sends them out into the desert, mountain, and forest solitudes that there they may meet and talk with Those Above. Every youth or young man who hopes to be a “medicine man” goes out to some such solitary place. He takes no food, no nourishment of any kind, and fasts several days and nights. He drinks nothing but a little water. He sleeps as little as possible. Then if spirits come to him he must obey the teachings and requirements of each one. These teachings and requirements demand the suppression of the natural instincts and desires, and the exercise of positive restraints to an extent that the greatest religious devotee of the white race would scarcely be willing to submit to. One spirit demands that water be drank but once a day, no matter how hot the weather; another that no food shall be taken on three days out of each week; another that no hide shall be made into moccasins, and so on. This, therefore, means a life of self-denial and restraint that surpasses anything known in civilization. Our Catholic priests take a vow of perpetual chastity and obedience, the members of the religious orders go further and pledge themselves to perpetual poverty, but these Indian medicine men, who accept the aid of many spirits,—ten, twenty, and even thirty,—are limited and restricted in their lives to a degree that is as astonishing as it is, to the majority of the white race, unknown.

Now, while the specific acts of restraint of the Indian may not appeal to me, the spirit of them is much needed by our whole race. Self-restraint, self-denial, self-control, are the bulwarks of spiritual power. He only is strong in spirit who can control himself, hence I would that the white race would learn these lessons from the Indian.

Browning thoroughly believed in this spirit of self-restraint, self-sacrifice, self-control. In his Rabbi Ben Ezra he preaches some strong doctrines. Nothing is more needed to-day than the following robust and forceful words put into practical every-day living:

CHAPTER XXIII
THE INDIAN AND AFFECTATION

Most people of the white race may learn from the Indian in the matter of affectation. Few of us are simple and natural in our social manners. My own family often joke me, when, in answering the telephone, I respond in what they call my “dressy tone.” The other day a lady, whose husband is a college professor, mistook me for a distinguished eastern psychologist whose surname happens to be the same as mine. Until she discovered her mistake she “minced and mouthed” in a most ludicrous fashion (how I wish she could have seen herself as I saw her!) merely because she thought I was a prominent man in the field wherein her husband was a more humble member. The criticism on my own “dressy tone” is a perfectly just one. I find myself, often, “putting on style” because I want to appear “my best.” After due consideration I have decided to confess that—like most people—I have a variety of “celluloid smiles” which unconsciously I put on or off as occasion requires. We are not simple, not natural in our relationships one with another. We feel that we must “make an impression,” that we must “appear well.” The result is we are unnatural, affected, often deceptive, and many a time disagreeable. Affectation in speech and manner is always a sign of mental meanness,—of what is commonly called vulgarity, and is never to be commended but is always to be condemned.

On the other hand, if the President of the United States were to visit a tribe of uncontaminated Indians, as, for instance, the Navahos, they would treat him in exactly the same manner as they would the humblest citizen; except, of course, that if the president asked for a pow-wow they would give him one, and treat his words with respectful deference. But there would be no affectation in their dealings with him, no putting on of airs or style. With frank, open directness, with the respect they show, as a rule, to each other, and no more, they would listen to all he had to say and give hearty and manly response of approval or disapproval. They have no “company manners,” no changes of voice which are used according to the social status of the listener. There are no snobs among them. “A man’s a man for a’ that,” no matter whether he wears an old army overcoat and a top hat or merely a tight skin and his gee-string.

The white race, too, is fearfully affected in its pretense at knowing more than it can know. We are all ashamed to say, “I don’t know!” I believe this applies more truthfully to women than to men. Since the era of the woman’s club, the gentle sex has been wild to accumulate knowledge, and sadly too often, it is content to appear to have the knowledge rather than appear ignorant. One has but to look over the programs of a score or a hundred women’s clubs, as I have recently done, to see proof of this in the vast range many of them take in a single season. They crowd into an hour’s or two hours’ session what no person living can get a reasonable grasp of in less than from three months to a year of fairly consistent and persistent study. They jump from “The Romantic School of Music,” one week to “The Effect of the Renaissance upon Gothic Art,” the next, and the third week finds them swallowing a concentrated pill on “The Poets of the Victorian Era,” while on the fourth they completely master all that can be learned of “The Franciscan Mission Epoch in California and Its Influence upon the Indians.”

Yet let it not be thought that I am not a believer in education for women, women’s clubs, and the like. I believe in everything that really helps. And if these clubs would compel mental exercise enough to give a fair grasp of one subject a year, they would be doing work of incalculable benefit. But this smattering of knowledge, this thin spreading out of scraps of information, feed no one’s mind, and the pretense that comes from an assumed knowledge does the mind and soul of the pretender more harm than a dozen clubs can eradicate in a lifetime. Hence, let us become simple-minded, as the Indians. They “don’t know,” and they know they don’t know, and they are willing to say so.

There is another affectation to which I must refer. We Americans pretend to be democratic, yet we have a caste of wealth that is more disgusting, degrading, and demoralizing than the Hindoo castes, or the social scale of European aristocracy. We “kow tow” to an English lord as if he were a little god, and we bow and scrape and mince our words when we come in contact with the nouveau riche of our own land, just as if they were made of different material from ourselves. The space given in our newspapers to the most trivial doings of Alice Roosevelt, both before and after she married Congressman Longworth; the recital of the actions of the “society” few,—the Vanderbilts, Astors, Goulds, Carnegies, Harrimans, Fishes, and the rest,—are proofs of our affected snobbism. I have not yet attained to the mental serenity and calm philosophy of the Indian, but I am seeking it, where I shall judge all men and women not by their exterior circumstances of wealth, position, dress, or birth, but by inherent character, perfection of body, force of mind, and beauty of soul.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE INDIAN AND ART WORK

Even our artists and designers may learn much of great importance from the Indian. While to most of my readers it may come as a surprise that I claim great artistic powers for the Indian, yet no one can carefully study the basketry and pottery of the Amerind and not know the perfect justice of the claim. In my larger work on this subject5 I have fairly discussed the ability of the Indians in this regard; and to those who are not aware of the vast debt the white race owes to the aboriginal woman in artistic as well as other lines, I earnestly commend a perusal of that masterly work by a conscientious and thorough student, Otis T. Mason, of the Smithsonian Institution, entitled “Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture.”

In reference to their basketry, however, more than a mere passing mention is required. The Indian weaver shows marvelous ability in the creation of form, color, stitch, and design. Turning to Nature for her original inspirations she is not a mere copyist of what others have done. All her forms are based upon utility, and therefore meet the first and highest requirement of all art when applied to articles that are to serve a useful purpose, viz., adaptation to use. There is no reversal of principles in manufacture, as is so often the case with white workers who value appearance, so-called ornament, finish, etc., rather than adaptation to purpose or utility. Wherever anything is allowed to usurp the place of this primary element, the work is doomed even before it is made. On the other hand, frankness, honesty, simplicity, directness, characterize the manufactures of the Indian. They are to serve such and such a purpose; that purpose is openly denoted. The result is that, to the unperverted eye, the artistic work of the unspoiled Indian is as perfect in form as it can be. There is no wild straining after unique effect; no fantastic distortions to secure novelty; everything is natural and rational, and therefore artistically effective.

In color, too, the original work of the Indian weavers, before the vile aniline dyes were forced upon them by the “civilized” and “Christian” traders and missionaries, was above criticism. The old baskets and blankets are eagerly sought after, at fabulous prices, by the most refined and critical of artists and connoisseurs because of the perfection of their color harmonies. In every good collection are to be seen such specimens that are both the admiration and despair of modern artists.

As for weave, it is asserted upon the highest authority that there is not a weave or stitch known to modern art that was not given to our civilization by the aborigines. And they have many stitches of great effectiveness that we have not availed ourselves of. Take the Pomas alone—a tribe of basket-makers who live in northern California. They have not less than fourteen different stitches or weaves, some of them of marvelous beauty and strength. In one of the accompanying pictures is a specimen of their carrying baskets. This basket will hold a large load of seeds or fruit, and when so laden requires a construction of great durability to sustain the burden. It is woven with this express purpose in view, yet it is artistically decorated with a beautifully worked out design. Here is an important lesson the white race might learn, viz., that the utensils of daily life should be surrounded with as much beauty as is practical. The kitchen should be as full of enjoyment to the eye, in reason, as the parlor. The cook and maid need æsthetic surroundings as well as—indeed, more than,—the mistress and her children. If social custom insists upon making servants of one part of its members, the other part should be willing to make their “servitude” as comfortable and beautiful as is possible and practicable. Think of these poor, ignorant(!) Indian women making baskets for porridge, carrying baskets, plaques for holding food, mush bowls, and a score of other purposes, all beautifully decorated and ornamented with designs that express some emotion of their own souls, some ambition, some aspiration, or some happy memory.

In the matter of these designs the white race has much it may learn from the Indian. Sometimes I have looked upon the patterns and colors of our wallpapers, our rugs, our carpets, our chintzs, our calicoes, and especially upon the wool work or embroidery of some women, and have been compelled to ask myself if hideousness could be carried to any further extent. Some of the designs were the absolute delirium tremens of craziness,—conventionality reconventionalized again and again, until it was made unlike to anything in “the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth.”

I was once lecturing to a “civilized” and “cultivated” audience upon this subject of Indian designs that have a personal meaning, and when I got through I heard one highly civilized and cultivated man exclaim in disgust: “Why, he’ll soon try to make us believe that our own wall-paper patterns ought to mean something!”

Most certainly I will! The idea that we, the superior, the wise race, use designs in our goods that are supposed to be beautiful to us, and yet that have no meaning! What absurdity and foolishness for our girls and women to spend hours on “fancy-work” (!), the designs of which are a crazy, intricate something to be dreaded rather than admired. The Indians have more sense than to waste their time over such foolishness. They have studied Nature in all her varying forms, and their minds are stored up with a thousand and one designs which they can transfer at pleasure to their basketry, pottery, or blanketry. I have had the pleasure of teaching this basic principle of art work to many white women, and I learned it from the Indian. One woman wanted to get a design for her sofa pillows. I asked her if she had no flowering vine over her porch. She said “Yes.” “Then copy its leaf and flower,” was my reply, and when she did so, and saw the beauty of the design she had created from Nature, her soul was filled with a new joy, and she wrote me that few things had given her more pleasure than the discovery of that basic principle.

Think of the white race making baskets. Where do they go to for their forms and designs? In thousands of cases they take my own books and copy from them! But where did I get them? I am no creative artist, no inventor of design! I got them, “body, soul, and breeches,” from the Indian,—every one of them; and yet the “superior race” must go to them to copy, instead of so disciplining the powers of observation from Nature that designs for embroidery, for basketry, for fancy-work of every description, are contained within their own memories. The Indian’s life has trained these wonderful faculties of observation and memory. He was compelled to watch the animals in order that he might avoid those that were dangerous and catch those that were good for food; to follow the flying birds that he might know when and where to trap them and secure their eggs; the fishes as they spawned and hatched; the insects as they bored and burrowed; the plants and trees as they grew and budded, blossomed and seeded. He became familiar, not only with such simple things as the movements of the polar constellations and the retrograde and forward motions of the planets, but also with the less known spiral movements of the whirl-winds as they took up the sands of the desert; and the zigzags of the lightning were burned into his consciousness and memory in the fierce storms that, again and again, in darkest night, swept over the exposed area in which he roamed; with the flying of the birds, the graceful movements, the colors, and markings of the snakes, the peculiar wigglings of insects, and their tracks, and those of reptiles, birds, and animals, whether upon the sand, the snow, the mud, or more solid earth, he soon became familiar. The rise and fall of the mountains and valleys, the soaring spires and wide-spreading branches of the trees, the shadows they cast, and the changes they underwent as the seasons progressed, the scudding or anchored clouds in their infinitude of form and color, the graceful arch of the rainbow, the peculiar formation and dissipation of the fogs, the triumphant lancings of the night by the gorgeous fire-weapons of the morning sun, the stately retreat of the king of day as evening approached,—all these and a thousand and one other things of beauty in Nature the Indian soon learned to know, and from all these mental images he can readily draw when a design is needed.