What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

by George Wharton James

GOD’S GIFT, THE AIR

Now, is there anything that freer seems
Than air, the fresh, the vital, that a man
Draws in with breathings bountiful, nor dreams
Of any better bliss, because he can
Make over all his blood thereby, and feel
Once more his youth return, his muscles steel,
And life grow buoyant, part of God’s good plan!

Oh, how on plain and mountain, and by streams
That shine along their path; o’er many a field
Proud with pied flowers, or where sunrise gleams
In spangled splendors, does the rich air yield
Its balsam; yea, how hunter, pioneer,
Lover, and bard have felt that heaven was near
Because the air their spirit touched and healed!

And yet—God of the open!—look and see
The millions of thy creatures pent within
Close places that are foul for one clean breath,
Thrilling with health, and hope, and purity;
Nature’s vast antidote for stain and sin,
Life’s sweetest medicine this side of death!
How comes it that this largess of the sky
Thy children lack of, till they droop and die?

Many white people go out tenting in the summer and think they are sleeping out of doors. What a foolish error. Here is what a scientific authority says upon the subject:

“Are you tenting? If so, you should know:

“That a well-closed tent is nearly air-tight, and consequently,—

“That in an ordinary-sized tent, one occupant will so pollute the air as to render it unfit to breathe in less than twenty minutes; two occupants, in less than ten minutes.

A CHEMEHUEVI INDIAN AND HIS OUT-OF-DOOR SHELTER FROM THE SUN.

“That if you are tenting for your health, an opening at each end of the tent must be provided for ventilation at night. The openings should be at least a foot square for each occupant.

“Breathing impure air lowers the vitality, and consequently renders one susceptible to colds and other diseased conditions.”

CLIMBING ONE OF THE TRAILS IN HAVASU CANYON, ARIZONA.

CHAPTER VI
THE INDIAN AS A WALKER, RIDER, AND CLIMBER

As a part of his out-of-door life the Indian is a great walker and runner, having horses he is a great rider, and living in a mountainous or canyon region he is a great climber. The Indian walks through necessity, and also through delight and joy. He knows to the full “the joy of mere living.” A few miles’ walk, more or less, is nothing to him, and he does it so easily that one can see he enjoys it. In one of my books[1] I tell the story of the running powers of the Hopi Indians of northern Arizona. It is worth quoting here:

[1] The Indians of the Painted Desert Region. Little, Brown & Co., Boston, illustrated, $2.00 net, 20c postage.

“It is no uncommon thing for an Oraibi or Mashonganavi to run from his home to Moenkopi, a distance of forty miles, over the hot blazing sands of a real American Sahara, there hoe his corn-field, and return to his home, within twenty-four hours. I once photographed, the morning after his return, an old man who had made this eighty-mile run, and he showed not the slightest trace of fatigue.

“For a dollar I have several times engaged a young man to take a message from Oraibi to Keam’s Canyon, a distance of seventy-two miles, and he has run on foot the whole distance, delivered his message, and brought me an answer within thirty-six hours.

“One Oraibi, Ku-wa-wen-ti-wa, ran from Oraibi to Moenkopi, thence to Walpi, and back to Oraibi, a distance of over ninety miles, in one day.”

I doubt not that most of my readers suppose that these experiences are rare and unusual, and come after special training. Not at all! They are regular occurrences, made without any thought that the white man was either watching or recording. When asked for the facts, the Indians gave them as simply and as unconcernedly as we might tell of a friend met or a dinner eaten. And it is not with one tribe alone. I have found the same endurance with Yumas, Pimas, Apaches, Navahos, Havasupais, Wallapais, Chemehuevis, Utes, Paiutis, and Mohaves. Indeed, on the trackless wastes of the Colorado desert the Mohaves and Yumas perhaps show a greater endurance than any people I have ever seen.

As a horseback-rider the Indian can teach many things to the white race. Among the Navahos and Hopis, the Havasupais and Wallapais, the Pimas and Apaches, most of the children are taught to ride at an early age. They can catch, bridle, and saddle their own horses while they are still “little tots,” and the way they ride is almost a marvel. There need be no wonder at this, for their mothers are as used to horseback-riding as they are. Many an Indian child has come near to being born on horseback. They ride up and down trails, over the plains and up the mountains. They go with their parents gathering the seeds and pinion nuts, and are also taught to handle their horses in the chase. They study “horse-nature,” and early become expert horse-breakers. While their animals are broncos and wild, and therefore are never as well “broken” as are ours, they compel them to every duty, and ride them fearlessly and constantly.

The girls and women, too, ride almost as much as the boys and men, and always astride. If anything were needed to demonstrate to an Indian woman the inferiority of a white woman it would be that she sits on a side-saddle. The utter unnaturalness and folly of such a posture is so incomprehensible to the Indian mind that she “throws up her hands,” figuratively speaking, and gives up the problem of solving the peculiar mentality of her white sister. And I don’t wonder! Thank God the day is passing when women are ashamed of having legs, or of placing one of them on one side and the other on the other side of a horse. Common sense and comfort will ultimately prevail, and place the most modest, refined, cultured, and womenly women upon the backs of their horses cavalier fashion, dressed in trousers. The idea that men should dictate to women what they should do to be womanly is so absurd as to make even fools laugh. What does a man know as to what is womanly? Women alone can determine that question, just as men alone must determine what is manly. So I am satisfied that I shall live to see womenly women—the best the world has—reasonably natural in their dress on horseback, and riding as the Creator evidently intended them to do.

If girls as well as boys of the white race were to ride horseback more, much disease would flee away. Liver and stomach troubles are shaken out of existence on horseback; the blue devils and constipation are almost an impossibility, and the exhilaration of the swift motion and the vivifying influence of the deeper breathing, the shaking up of the muscles and nerves, the quickening effect of the accelerated heart action, and the readier circulation of well-oxygenated blood make the whole body a-tingle with a newness of life that is glorious. If I were well to do and had a score of children their chief education should be out of doors, and rain or shine, storm or calm, snow or sleet, winter or summer, boys and girls alike should ride horseback ten to twenty miles or more each day.

A ZUNI INDIAN WITH A JAR OF WATER
UPON HER HEAD.

Nor should this do away with daily walking. Walking is a fine offset to riding. One needs to walk a good deal to enjoy riding a good deal. One is a necessary complement to the other. One exercise uses muscles that are little called upon by the other. So I would make good walkers, in all weathers, of all boys, girls, men, and women of the white race, even as are those of the Indian race. In order to be good walkers the Indians have naturally found the most perfect and natural attitude for walking. Every Indian walks upright, his abdomen in, chest up, chin down, and spinal column easily carrying his body and arms. The white race may well learn from the Indian how to keep the spinal column upright, how to have a graceful carriage in walking, and how to cure stooped shoulders. With all younger women and men of all ages among the Indians a curved spine, ungraceful walk, and stooped shoulders are practically unknown. The women produce this result by carrying burdens upon their heads.

Yes, and the boys and men as well carry burdens also upon the head, though not as much as the women. Burden carrying upon the head is a good thing. As one writer has well said:

“Most of us are accustomed to regard the head as a mere thinking machine, unconscious of the fact that this bony superstructure seems to have been specially adapted by Nature to the carrying of heavy weights.

“The arms are usually considered as the means intended for the bearing of burdens, but the effect of carrying heavy articles in the hands or on the arms is very injurious, and altogether destructive of an erect or graceful carriage. The shoulders are dragged forward, the back loses its natural curve, the lungs are compressed, and internal organs displaced.

“When the head bears the weight of the burden, as it is made to do among the peasant women of Italy, Mexico, and Spain, and the people of the Far East, there is great gain in both health and beauty. The muscles of the neck are strengthened, the spine held erect, the chest raised and expanded, so that breathing is full and deep, and the shoulders are held back in their natural position.

A YOKUT INDIAN WITH A WHEELBARROW LOAD OF PEACHES AND
FIGS. THE CARRYING BASKET IS SUSPENDED BY A BROAD
BAND OVER THE FOREHEAD.

“It is a good thing for children to be early accustomed to the carrying of various articles, gradually increasing in weight, balanced upon the head. In this way they may acquire an erect carriage, and free and graceful walk.”

The Indian man and woman will pick up an olla of water, containing a gallon or more, and swinging it easily to the top of the head will walk along with hands by their sides, as unconcernedly as if they carried no fragile bowl balanced and ready to fall at the slightest provocation. And they will climb up steep and difficult trails, still balancing the jar upon the head. The effect of this is to compel a natural and dignified carriage. I know Navaho, Hopi, and Havasupai women who walk with a simple dignity that is not surpassed in drawing-room of president or king.

Then, too, another reason for this dignified, healthfully erect carriage is found in the fact that neither men nor women wear high-heeled shoes. The moccasin is always flat, and therefore the foot of the Indian rests firmly and securely upon the floor. No doubt if the Indian woman wished to imitate the forward motion of the kangaroo, or any other frivolous creature, she could tilt herself in an unnatural and absurd position by high-heeled shoes, but in all my twenty-five years of association with them I never found one foolish enough to do so.

The men, as well as the women, gain this upright attitude as the result of “holding up their vital organs” when they go for their long hunting and other tramps. It seems to me that fully one-half the white men (and women) we meet on the streets are suffering from prolapsus of the transverse colon. This is evidenced by the projection of the abdomen, which generally grows larger as they grow older; so that we have “tailors for fat men,” and special implements of torture for compressing into what we call a decent shape the embonpoint of women. But, I ask, as I see the Indians, why do white people have this paunch?

APACHE MAIDEN CARRYING A BASKET
WATER OLLA UPON HER HEAD. FULL
OF WATER THIS WEIGHS MANY POUNDS.

An Indian with a “bay-window” stomach, a paunch, is seldom, if ever seen. Why? He has long ago learned the art, the necessity, of keeping his abdominal muscles stretched tight. His belly is always held in. The muscles across his abdomen are like steel. The result is the transverse colon is held securely in position. It has no prolapse, hence there is no paunch. If we taught ourselves, as the Indian does, to draw in the abdomen and at the same time breathe long and deep, this prolapsus would be practically impossible. Half the medicine that is sold to so-called “kidney sufferers” is sold to people whose kidneys are no more diseased than are those of the man in the moon. It is the pulling and tugging of the falling colon that causes the wearisome backache; and the lying and scoundrelous wretches who prey upon the ignorant write out their catch-penny advertisements describing these feelings, so that when the sufferer picks up their literature he is as good as entrapped for “a dozen or more bottles,” or until his money gives out.

O men and women of America, learn to walk upright, as God intended you should. Do not become “chesty” by throwing out your chest, and throwing your shoulders back at the expense of your spine, but pull in the muscles of your abdomen, fill your lungs with air, then pull your chin down and in, and you will soon have three great, grand, and glorious blessings; viz., a dignified, upright carriage; freedom from and reasonable assurance that you will never have prolapsus of the transverse colon and its attendant miseries and backache; and a lung capacity that will help you withstand the approaches of disease should you ever, in some other way, come under its malign influence.

When I see white boys slouching and shambling along the streets I wish with a great wish that I could have them put under the training of some of my wild Indian friends. They would soon brace up; heads would be held erect, chins down, abdomen in, chest up, and with lips closed, and the pure air of the mountain, canyon, plain, desert, or forest entering their lungs through the nostrils; the whole aspect of life would begin to change. For “nothing lifts up the spirits so much as just to lift the chest up. It takes a load off the head, off the mind, off the heart. Raise your chest so high that the abdominal organs perform their functions in a proper way. When one is all doubled over, the head and spine are deprived of blood that they are entitled to. When the chest is lifted up, the abdominal organs are compressed, and the blood that has been retired from the circulation and accumulated in the liver and the stomach is forced back into the current where it belongs. The head and spinal cord get their proper supply of blood, and one feels refreshed and energized immediately.”

HAVASUPAI CHILD WITH WATER BOTTLE SUSPENDED FROM THE FOREHEAD.

But in addition to their walking and riding the Indians are great climbers of steep canyon and mountain trails. Men, women, and children alike pass up and down these trails with almost the ease and agility of the goat. I have seen a woman with a kathak (carrying basket) suspended from her forehead containing a load of fruit, of pine nuts, of grass seeds, weighing not less than from 50 to 100 lbs., her baby perched on top of the load, steadily and easily climb a trail that made me puff and blow like a grampus. Few exercises, properly taken, are of greater benefit to the lungs and heart, and indeed, all the vital organs, than is trail or mountain climbing. See that your clothing is easy, especially around the waist, for there must be room for every effort of lung expansion. This applies to men as well as to women, for the wretched and injurious habit is growing among men of wearing a belt instead of suspenders. If the prospective climber is a woman, let her wear a loose, light dress, and with as short a skirt as her common sense, judgment, and conscience will allow her to wear. If she is out “in the wilds,” let her wear trousers and discard skirts entirely as a senseless and barbarous slavery to custom and convention. Shoes should be easy and comfortable, with thick soles and broad, low heels.

CLIMBING THE TRAILS IN THE CANYON OF THE HAVASU, ARIZONA.

Begin to climb as early in the morning as possible. Don’t try to do too much at first. Try a small hill. Conquer that by degrees. Get so that you can finally go up and down without any great effort. Then tackle the higher hills, and finally try real mountains, eight, ten, fourteen thousand feet high. If you are delicate to begin with be more careful still, and ask the advice of your physician, but don’t be afraid so long as you do not get fatigued to exhaustion. For climbing develops the thighs and calves of the leg, the muscles of the back, enlarges the lungs, makes the heart pump more and purer (because better oxygenated) blood throughout the whole body, brings about more rapid changes in the material of the body, and thus exchanges old and useless tissue for new and healthy, dissolves and dissipates fat, induces perspiration and exhalations through the kidneys that are peculiarly beneficial.

In breathing be sure to keep the mouth closed. Insist upon nasal breathing, and the exercise will perforce make it deep breathing. The deeper you breathe the more good you will get from it. Let the posture be correct or you will lose much good. This is in brief: pull the abdomen in, raise the chest, keep the chin down, and let the arms hang easily and naturally by the side.

For years I have compelled myself to seize every possible opportunity for trail climbing or descending. Hundreds of miles of trails have I gone up and down in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, often with a thirty, forty, fifty pound camera and food supplies on my back. I have ascended scores of mountains throughout the Southwest, and the rich experiences of glowing health and vigor, vim, snap, tingle, that come from such exercises no one can know but those who have enjoyed them.

A few weeks ago I came to the Grand Canyon (September, 1907), after nearly a year of rest from physical labor on an extended scale (my civilized occupations had pre-empted all my time). I started out on the trail, up and down Havasu Canyon, Bass Trail of the Grand Canyon, and the Grand View and Red Canyon trails. Again and again I walked up the steepest portions for a mile at a time, setting the pace for the horses and mules, and it was a source of mental as well as physical delight that my lungs, heart, and body generally were in such good condition that I could do this day after day for two weeks, not only without exhaustion, but with positive exhilaration and physical delight.

CHAPTER VII
THE INDIAN IN THE RAIN AND THE DIRT

How these “things we may learn from the Indian” grow upon us, as we study the “noble red man” in his own haunts. Again and again I have noticed that “he doesn’t know enough to go in when it rains.” The white man who first coined that expression deemed it an evidence of smartness, and reared his head more proudly than his fellows because he was the author of so bright an idea. Yet when you come to consider it, what a foolish proposition it is! Go in when it rains? Why should you go in? Do the birds go in? I have just been watching them from my study window,—larks, linnets, song-sparrows, and mocking-birds. Not one of them seems to care a particle about the rain, and their songs are as sweet and as cheery and as full of melody as they are on the days of brightest sunshine. How well I recall seeing a mocking-bird on a stand on my lawn one day when the rain was pouring down fiercely. He stood with bill up and tail down so that he had a very “Gothic-roof-like” appearance, his mouth wide open, and as the rain poured from the end of his tail he sent out a flood of melody more rich and sweet than any bird-song I ever heard.

And the horses! How they enjoy the rain! I have seen them loose in a stable having double doors, the upper of which was open, and when it rained they would thrust their noses out into the rain and let the drippings of the eaves fall upon them with evident pleasure and longing that they might get out into it all over.

HEALTHY NAVAHO CHILDREN USED TO THE RAIN AND THE OUT OF DOORS.

Nothing alive in Nature save “civilized” man dreads the rain. The Indian fairly revels in it. I was once at the Havasupai village for a couple of weeks, the guest of my friend Wa-lu-tha-ma. His little girl, seven years old, was a perfect little witch. She was quick, nervy, lively, and healthy. When it rained and her clothes got wet I tried to prevail upon her to come into shelter. But no! She wanted to be out in the rain, and off she sprang through the door, playing with the pools as they collected, and running with others of her playmates to where the extemporized waterfalls dashed themselves into semi-spray as they fell from the heights above upon the shelving rocks. Here they stood, in the water and rain, like dusky fairies, laughing and shouting, romping and sporting, in perfect glee.

The older women, too, mind it but little, unless it is very cold or the wind is blowing. They no more mind being wet than they do that the wind should blow or the sun shine, and as for any ill effect that either children or grown-ups suffer from the wet, I have yet to see it. Why? The reasons are clear. In the first place, they have no fear of the rain. It is not constantly instilled into their minds from childhood that “they mustn’t get wet, or they’ll take cold,” and girls are not taught to expect functional disarrangement if they “get their feet wet.” This has something to do with it, for the effect of the mind upon the body is far more potent than we yet know.

In the second place, they move about with natural activity in the rain as at other times. This keeps the blood circulating and prevents any lowering of the temperature of the body.

In the third place, their general out-of-door life gives them such a robustness that if there is any tax upon the system it is fully ready to meet it.

But I am asked, “Would you advocate white people, especially girls and women, getting wet? Think of their skirts bedraggled in the rain, and how these wet skirts cling to the ankles and make their wearers uncomfortable.”

INDIAN KISH IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

I have thought a great deal about this, and am not prepared to say that with our present costume I would advocate women’s going out much in the rain. But I do say that once in a while they can put on short skirts and stout shoes and such old clothes as cannot be injured by getting wet, and then resolutely and boldly sally forth into the rain, and the harder it comes down the better, if it be warm weather. Then let them learn to enjoy the pattering of the rain upon cheeks and ears. Let them hold out their hands and feel the soft and gentle caresses of the “high-born, noble rain.” Let them watch the drops as they spatter on the leaves and trickle down the stems, gathering volume and speed as they reach the bole and fall to the ground, there to give life and nourishment to the whole plant. Everything in Nature loves to be out in the rain. How fresh and bright the trees look after a shower! How the rocks are cleansed and made bright and shining! How their color comes vividly out in the rain! And upon human beings the effect is the same, provided they value health and vigor more than they mind a little discomfort in the bedragglement of their clothes. Years ago I learned this lesson. I was riding from the line of the railway, over the Painted Desert, with several Havasupai Indians. It was the rainy season. Showers fell half a dozen times a day. At first I wished I had an umbrella. I got wet through, and so did the Indians. I thought I ought to feel wretched and miserable, but somehow the Indians were as bright and cheerful as ever, so I plucked up heart and courage, and in half an hour my clothes were dry again. Four or five times that day and an equal number the next day, I got wet through and dry again. Riding horseback kept me warm, and the quick and healthful circulation of the blood, the active deep breathing caused by the exercise, the absence of fear in the soul, all combined to make the wetting a benefit instead of an injury.

My friend W. W. Bass, of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, with whom I have made many trips in that Wonderland region, tells with great gusto a true story of my riding over the desert on one occasion, clothed in one of the old-fashioned linen dusters that reached below my knees. It was warm weather, and dusty on the railway, hence the duster, I suppose. But when we got fairly out on the desert it began to rain, and how it did pour! It came down so rapidly that by and by my pockets were full of water, and Bass says that when he overtook me, I was jogging along, singing at the top of my voice (just as the mocking-bird did), the water splashing out of my pockets as I bounced up and down in the saddle. The linen duster clung to the sides and back of the horse, and wrapped itself around my legs so that the picture was comical in the extreme. But I was happy, and refused to feel any discomfort, and so got joy out of the experience, as well as health and vigor. For let it be remembered that when I came from England, twenty-five years ago, I came as an invalid, broken down in health completely; so much so that I was even forbidden to read a book for a whole year. Now few men are as healthy as I. Years of association with the Indian, learning simplicity and naturalness of him, have aided materially in making the change. I have learned the value of putting the primary things first. I used to be so “nice” and “finnicky” that the idea of having my clothes wet would give me a small panic. “They would get out of shape and look badly, and have to be pressed before I could wear them again.” But when I came to the conclusion that I was worth more than clothes, that my health was of more importance than a crease in my trousers, I found I was taking hold of a principle which, while it might at times seem to be rough on my clothing, would have a decidedly beneficial influence on myself.

And this leads to another important lesson we may learn from the Indian. He is not as “nice” sometimes as I wish he were, but we are far too nice, often, for health and comfort. Many a woman ruins her health by wrecking her nerves, drives her husband distracted, worries and annoys her children, by being too nice in her house. I have found, in New England and elsewhere,—aye, even in Old England,—women who valued a clean house more than they valued their own lives, the happiness of their children, and the comfort of their husbands. Indeed, in one case I well remember a woman drove her husband into temporary insanity, and finally into ignominious flight away from her, by her eternal washing of floors, shaking of carpets, polishing of furniture, and dusting down. Every time the poor fellow went in from the workshop he must change his clothes. If he came in from the outside he must take off his shoes before he entered the door. If he put his warm hand down on the polished table he was rebuked, for his wife at once got up, fetched her chamois leather and rubbed off the offending marks. Poor, wretched woman, and equally poor, wretched man! No wonder he went crazy, and finally lost his manhood and ran away.

I know this is an extreme case. But I vouch for its strict truth. And there are thousands of women (and men too, for that matter) who are afflicted in a serious measure with the same disease. In that home where niceness is valued more than health and comfort and work in life, there lurks serious danger. Go to the Indian, and while I do not suggest that you lose all niceness by any means, seek to learn some of his philosophy and place primary things first. First, health, happiness, comfort, peace, contentment, love; then these other things.

HOPI CHILDREN ENJOYING THEIR DAILY SPORT ON THE BACK OF A BURRO.

I’m going to make a confession that I am afraid will bring me into sad repute with some of my readers. When my first boy was born, we were naturally very proud of him. As he grew out of his baby clothes we liked to see him look nice and neat and clean. He must be a pretty little cherub, dressed in white and have the manners of a Little Lord Fauntleroy. Then I came to the conclusion that we were valuing “niceness” more than the healthy development of the child. I remonstrated and urged a change but to no effect, so I resolved on a coup d’état. One morning after the youngster was dressed up in his white bib and tucker, and as uncomfortable and unhappy as any and all healthy children feel at such treatment, I took him by the hand and led him out of doors and out of sight of all watchful eyes, where there was plenty of mud and plenty of water. In half an hour his changed appearance was a marvel. We started a little stream of water, which we then dammed. We made mud pies, and I helped him mix the “dough” in his apron. We reveled in mud from top to toe. I rolled him in it, so that back was as vividly marked as front. Not a remnant of niceness was left in him. We went home happy and contented, laughing and merry, but bedaubed and beplastered everywhere. We had had such a good time. And it was such fun going out with father. We were going again to-morrow and the next day and the next. And so we did. It needed no words, no argument. It did not take long to get two or three suits of brown canvas or blue denim, and the youngster grew up healthy, happy, vigorous, strong, tough, and often dirty, rather than anæmic, miserable, dyspeptic, weak and ailing, and nice. There would be far less demand for children’s tombstones, surmounted with marble angels and inscribed with wretched doggerel, if mothers valued health rather than niceness, vigor before primness, and strength immaculate rather than bibs and aprons. So I say, let us not be over-nice. And especially let us not train our children to value clean hands and clothes more than the rugged health that comes from contact with the soil in out-of-door employments. I find one can enjoy Homer, and Browning, Dante, and Shakspere, all the better because his body is vigorous and strong, his brain clear, and his mind active as the result of rough-and-tumble mountain climbing, desert tramping or riding, and walking on canyon trails.

Another result of this frank and fearless acceptance of out-of-door conditions is manifested in a readiness to meet difficulties that over-niceness is disinclined to touch. Let me illustrate. Two or three months ago I made a journey with two Yuma Indians and four white men down the overflow of the Colorado River to the Salton Sea. We were warned beforehand that it would be “an awfully hard trip.” We were told that it was “hell boiled down” to try to go through certain places. The river for ten or twelve miles left its bed and ran wild over a vast tract of land covered with a mesquite forest. Mesquite is a fairly dense tree growth covered with strong and piercing thorns. When we came to this place we had to cut our way through the thorny thicket, and our faces, hands, and bodies all suffered with fierce scratchings and thorn-pricks. Several times we stuck fast, and there was nothing for it but to jump out into the water with ax in hand and cut away the obstructions or lift over the boat. My Indian, Jim, though dignified and serene, as I shall fully explain elsewhere, had the promptness that over-niceness destroys. He was out over the side of the boat as quickly as I was, ready for the hard and disagreeable work. Had I been “nicely” dressed, and “nice” about the feeling of water up to my middle, too “nice” to wade for hours, sinking into quicksands, in order to find the best passage for the boats, we should have been there yet. We cut down three mesquite trees, under water, in order to get our boats over the stumps. We forced our way through tall and dense arrow weeds, one in front and the other behind the boat, lifting and forcing, pulling and pushing. It was not “nice” work, but it was invigorating, stimulating, and soul-developing.

IN THE MESQUITE FOREST ON OUR WAY TO THE SALTON SEA.

The other day I went photographing on the Salton Sea. When the launch stopped twenty feet from the island covered with pelicans, where I wished to make photographs, I shouldered my camera, stepped out into the water, which came up to my thighs, and walked ashore. The engineer wondered. Why should he? Had I waited, the pelicans would have flown away. Speed was necessary. “Niceness” would have prevented my getting what I went for. When I stand on the lecture platform, or in the pulpit, or in the drawing-room; when I meet ladies in the parlor and go with them for an automobile ride, I dress as neatly as I can afford, and endeavor to look “nice;” but when I go into my garden to work, I put on blue overalls, a flannel shirt, and a pair of heavy shoes, and I try not to be nice. I roll around in the dirt, I feel it with my hands, I revel in it, for thus, I find, do I gain healthful enjoyment for body, mind, and soul. I owe many things to the Indian, but few things I am more grateful for than that he taught me how to value important things more than “looking neat” and being “nice.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE INDIAN AND PHYSICAL LABOR

Ministers and orators, teachers and statesmen, members of the W. C. T. U., as well as the Y. M. C. A., of the white race, all profess to believe that the white race believes in the dignity of physical labor.

That profession is often a lie.

We no more believe in the dignity of physical labor than we do in the refinement of a hog. Our actions give the direct lie to our words. I am writing with the utmost calmness, and say these strong words with deliberate intent. As a nation we are humbugs when we pretend to believe in the dignity of labor. Perhaps, after all, we do believe in it, but in most cases it is not for ourselves, but for “the other fellow.”

On the other hand, the Indian really and truly believes in the dignity of physical labor. A chief would just as soon be “caught” dressing buckskin, or sewing a pair of moccasins, or irrigating his corn-field as lolling on a Navaho blanket “smoking the pipe of peace.” With the white race this is not so. Men believe in the dignity of labor as much as they do in the brotherhood of man. They would no more be seen doing physical labor—wheeling a wheelbarrow, for instance, digging a ditch, building a wall, plowing a potato patch, or doing any other physical work, save the few things men are allowed to do without being thought peculiar, as, for instance, taking care of a small home garden, taking the ashes out of the furnace, and things of that kind—than they would be seen picking their neighbors’ pockets or burglarizing their houses. When they want to gain exercise they go to some indoor gymnasium, where the air is the breathed-over, dead air of a hundred people, and they swing dumb-bells, pull on weights, struggle frantically on bars, and do other similar and fool-like things, because, forsooth, these things are gentlemanly; or they go out and swing golf-clubs and pursue a poor innocent little ball over the “links,” while gaping caddies look on at their wild strokes, and listen to the insane profanity with which they try to compel themselves to believe that they are “gentlemen, bah Jove!”

A HAVASUPAI GIRL, WEAVER OF BASKETS.

Of all the contemptible, shuffling, and mean subterfuges the white race is capable of, this seems to me to be about the meanest and most contemptible. To pretend to believe in the dignity of labor, and then at any and all opportunities afforded to labor to dodge away and do these useless and selfish things that do not take off one ounce of the burden of physical labor we have imposed upon our fellows.

Let me not be thought for a moment to be opposed to any healthful recreation or sport. If golf be pursued as a recreation, for fun, I am heartily in accord with it and its promoters. It is when it is taken as an “exercise,” as a substitute for honest and useful labor, that I protest against it, as a fraud, a delusion, a snare, and a contemptible subterfuge. If you want real exercise, real work, go and relieve some poor fellow-man of his excess of hard work. Tell him you have come to give him an hour’s rest, that he may go and study nature, go and look at the flowers of your garden, wander into the woods and hear the birds sing, or visit the public library and read some entertaining and instructive book. If you are too ashamed to openly try to give an hour or two of rest and change to your “brother” man, go and chop the wood for the house, dig up the potato patch, wheel out the manure from the stable, or do some other useful and beneficial thing. Pleasure is pleasure, sport is sport, fun is fun, but to engage in these sports seriously, as a physical exercise to counteract the effects of your evil dietetic habits or other grossnesses, is to add hypocrisy and subterfuge to evil living.

HOPI INDIAN WEAVING A DRESS FOR HIS WIFE.

What labor the Indian has to do he does gladly, cheerfully, openly. He is not ashamed to have soiled hands or to be caught in the act. In this I am heartily in accord with him. If I ever wrote a creed one of the first articles of my religion would be: “I believe in the benefit and joy of physical labor.” If I had my way I would compel every member of the so-called “learned” professions (!), from preacher to lawyer, teacher and doctor, statesman, politician, and bartender, to spend not less than three hours at hard physical labor every day, and as for my brother preachers, I would put them to road-making every Monday, for half the day at least, so that by practical knowledge of road-making on earth they might be better able to preach to their congregations the following Sunday about the road to heaven. There is nothing that more reveals that we are a people of caste and class than the attitude of the rich and the “learned” toward physical labor. I am not in sympathy with that attitude in any respect; I despise, hate, loathe it, and would see it changed. To the Indian, for his honest respect for and indulgence in physical labor, I give my adherence and honor.

VARIOUS ARTICLES OF USE AND ORNAMENT MADE AND DECORATED BY INDIANS.

CHAPTER IX
THE INDIAN AND PHYSICAL LABOR FOR GIRLS AND WOMEN

In the preceding chapter I have given the Indian’s life, habit, thought, towards physical labor for himself and his sons. He holds the same attitude toward it for his daughter and his wife. And not only does he so hold it, but the wife and daughter regard it in exactly the same way. The out-door life of the Indian girl and woman makes her healthy, vigorous, muscular, and strong. She glories in her physical vigor and strength, and wonders why her white sister is not equal to her in physical capacity. When I tell her that the white women pity her because, forsooth, “she has to do so much hard work, while the lazy men sit by, smoking, and doing nothing,” she looks at me in vacant amazement. Once when I was talking in this way one of them said: “Are your white women all fools? Tell them we not only don’t need their pity, but we despise them for their habits of life that lead them to pity us. The Creator made us with the capacity and power for work. He knows that all beings must work if they would be healthy. We would be healthy, and therefore we do His will in working at our appointed tasks. We are glad and proud to do them. And as for the men: let them dare to interfere in our work and they will soon see what they will see. We brook no interference or help from them.”

HOPI WOMEN BUILDING A HOUSE AT ORAIBI, ARIZONA.

So their children (girls as well as boys) are all brought up from the earliest years to work, and to work hard. Boys are sent out to herd sheep, horses, and cattle; to watch the corn and see that nothing disturbs it. And the girls, as soon as they can toddle, become “little mothers” to their younger brothers and sisters. As they grow older they grind all the corn, gather all the wild grass and other seeds, make all the basketry and pottery, and prepare all the food for the household. To grind corn in the Indian fashion, with flat rock and metate, is no easy task for a strong man of the white race, yet I have known a girl of fifteen to keep at work at the metate for ten hours a day for several days in succession, in order that there might be plenty of flour when guests came to the Snake Dance.

On one of my visits to the Hopi village of Oraibi I found the women at work building a house. This is their occupation. All labor among Hopis is divided between the sexes in accordance with long-established custom, and I think it is so divided in all aboriginal peoples. The men undertook the protection of the home (were the warriors) and the hunting of animals for food. They also make the robes and moccasins. Those tribes that lost their nomad character and became sedentary added care of the fields and the stock to the work of their men. The women practically undertook all the rest. The building of the home, its care, the general gathering of seeds, and the preparation of all foods belong to them.

And as a rule, they do their chosen or appointed or hereditary work cheerfully. They know nothing of the aches and pains of their weaker white sisters; they are as strong as men, so they have no fear of physical labor. Not only this, but they enjoy it; they go to it with pleasure, as all healthy bodies do. How often have I stood and watched a healthy, vigorous man swing a hammer at the forge, or in a mine or a trench. How easily it was done, how gladly, how unconscious of effort! To the healthy woman, with reasonable strength, labor is also a pleasure. To feel one’s self accomplishing something, and able to do it without undue fatigue or exhaustion, what a delight it is!

The woman who honors us by coming to our house weekly to do the heavy work, often reminds me of a panther. She fairly “leaps” upon her work with an exuberance of strength and spirit that is a perfect delight, in this age of woman’s physical disability and disinclination to do physical labor.

NAVAHO MAIDENS CARRYING WATER OVER THE DESERT.

So it is with Indian women. They sing in unison when a dozen of them get together at the grinding-trough; though the work is hard enough, when long continued, to exhaust any strong man. I have seen women kneel and pound acorns all day, lifting a heavy pestle as high as their heads at every stroke. In the case of these women builders at Oraibi: they carried all the heavy rocks and put them in position, mixed their own mortar, and were their own paddies, and in everything, save the placing of the heavy crossbeams for the roof, to handle which they called upon some of the men for aid, they did all the work from beginning to end.

INDIAN MAIDENS TAUGHT BY THEIR MOTHER TO BE BASKET WEAVERS.

Now, while I do not especially want to see white women building a house, I do wish, with all my heart, that they had the physical strength to do it or similar arduous labor. I do long for the whole of my race that the women and girls shall have such vigorous health and strength that no ordinary labor could tire them.

“But,” say my white friends,—women and girls,—“we don’t want to work physically; there is no need for it; we are not strong enough to do it; we exhaust ourselves, and then do not have energy enough for the other duties of life; we engage servants to do our menial labor for us.”

COAHUILA BASKET WEAVER WORKING IN THE OPEN AIR.

Indeed! In the first place I want to protest with all the power I have against the word and idea “menial.” There is no menial service. All service, rendered in willing helpfulness and love, is dignified, noble, and ennobling. He or she who accepts service from another with the idea that the service is “menial,” thereby degrades himself, herself, far more than the person is “degraded” by the performance of the service. I would rather have my son a good scavenger, working daily to keep the city pure and clean, than be an “honored” lawyer, engaged in dishonest cases; a “successful” politician, tangled up with graft; a “popular” physician, selfishly deceiving his patients; or an “eloquent” and “dear” minister, self-righteously lauding himself and pouring forth inane platitudes in high-sounding phrases from the pulpit. “Menial service” is divine compared with these occupations when they are demoralized.

And the principle of all I have said applies to girls as well as boys. I would rather that daughters of mine should be able to scrub the floor, bake bread, do the family washing and mending, repair the boys’ clothes, knit, sew, and take care of the kitchen garden and the flowers, than strum “The Battle of Prague” or “The Maiden’s Prayer,” without feeling or expression, on a half-tuned piano. The former occupations are holy and dignified as compared with the sham exhibition of the latter. I like to see a girl with an apron on, strong, healthy, willing, useful, capable, engaged in useful household work, and if our young men had one-tenth part of the sense they ought to have, they would hunt for such girls to become their wives and the mothers of their children, rather than for the dainty, white-faced, wasp-waisted, finger-manicured dolls who are useful for no other purpose than to be looked at.

I have no desire to make pack-horses or slaves of intelligent women or girls, but I cannot help asking the question of them: “Which would you rather be, strong enough to do any and all so-called menial and laborious service, and endowed with perfect health, or be weakly and puny and live the life of ease and luxury that most women and girls seem to covet?” And upon the answer to that question should I base my judgment as to the wisdom, intelligence, and fitness for the duties of life of the answerer. There is no dignity in woman superior to the dignity of being able personally (if necessary) to care for all the physical needs of her household; there is no charm greater than the charm of strength combined with gracious, womanly sweetness exercised for the joy of others; there is no refinement greater than the refinement of a gloriously healthy woman radiating physical, mental, spiritual life upon all those who come within the sphere of her influence.

CHAPTER X
THE INDIAN AND DIET

A man is largely the result of what he eats. Indeed, many scientific specialists now tell us that sex determination is largely the result of the food eaten by the expectant mother, so that according to what the mother eats the unborn child becomes—male or female. Ploss in his well-known “Ueber die das Geschlechtsverhältniss der Kinder bedingenden Ursachen,” Düsing in his painstaking “Die Regulirung des Geschlechtsverhältnisses bei der Vernehrung der Menschen, Miere und Pflanzen,” and Westermarck in the “History of Human Marriage,” prove conclusively, from close study of actual experimentation, that the sex of the child is largely fixed by the quantity and quality of nutrition absorbed by the mother. Hence it is not too strong a statement that a man is largely the result of his (or his mother’s) food.

At first sight it will appear foolish to many of my readers to go to the Indian for ideas on diet, yet I think I can prove, more conclusively than the learned scientists whose books I have named above can prove their theories, that the Indian has many ideas on diet which the white race can learn to its great advantage.

HAVASUPAI WOMAN MAKING BREAD IN THE OPEN AIR.

In the first place, the normal aborigine, before he began to use the white man’s foods, was perforce compelled to live on a comparatively simple diet. His choice was limited, his cookery simple. Yet he lived in perfect health and strength. With few articles of diet, and these of the simplest character, prepared in the readiest and easiest ways, he attained a vigor, a robustness, that puts to shame the strength and power of civilized men. Why? The reasons are not far to seek. In simplicity of food there is safety. We eat not only too much, but too great variety, and every student of dietetics knows that the greater the variety the greater the possibility that too much will be eaten. The Indian, living his simple life, was compelled to be content with the maize, beans, pumpkins, and melons of his fields, the peaches of his orchards, the wild grass seeds, nuts, fruits, and roots he or his squaw could gather, and the products of his traps or the chase. Here, then, was a restricted dietary. He had not much choice, nor a large menu for each meal. The smaller the menu the less, as a rule, any person will eat, be he Indian or white man. The extended menu is a series of temptations to overeat. The simple menu of the Indian was a preventive to gluttony. It will doubtless be recalled that when the great Bismarck was broken down in health, his physicians gave him no other prescription as to food than that he should eat but one kind of food to a meal. This is a dietetic axiom: The less variety the less one eats. In a diseased condition health can often be restored by giving the stomach and assimilative organs less work to do.

Among the Indian race dyspepsia is almost unknown. To this fact that they have a small variety of foods, this healthful condition is largely attributable. On the other hand, one has but to pick up any daily newspaper to see the positive proofs of the dyspeptic condition of the “greatest nation of the world” among the white race. There are nostrums for dyspepsia without end. Syrups, pills, doses that work while you sleep, and dopes that work inside and out. Millions of dollars are annually spent merely in advertising these damnable proofs of our idiocy or gluttony, or both. A thousand nostrums flout their damned and damning lies in the faces of the “superior race”! And a drug store on every corner of our large cities demonstrates the great demand there is for these absolute proofs of our vile dietetic habits. Every pill taken, every nostrum swallowed, is a proof positive of our ignorance, or our gluttony, or our gullibility, and probably a good deal of each. Seventy-five millions of dollars were spent in 1905 in the purchase of patent medicines, every cent of which was worse than wasted.

Before the white race came and perverted—pardon me, civilized—him, what did the “uncivilized Indian” know of patent medicines? What did he know of the diseases which these nostrums are supposed to cure? Nothing! He was as ignorant of one as the other. In his native wildness he was healthy and strong; only since he has been led into evil ways by a false civilization has he so degenerated as to need such compounds.

Let us, then, forget our civilization,—this portion of it,—and forego our physical ills and our patent nostrums, and go back to a simple, natural, restricted diet. In that one course of procedure will be found more restored health than all the physicians of the world can give otherwise in a score of years. Let us learn to eat few things to a meal, and those of such a nature that they will properly mix, and thus not overtax the stomach in its work of digestion.

When I sit down to the laden tables of my rich friends, or at the tables of the first-class hotels of the country, I sometimes find my judgment stronger than my perverted appetite. At such times I look over the bill of fare. I see ten or a dozen courses, varying from cocktails, oysters, and fish to ice-cream, fruit, and wines. There are meats and vegetables, nuts and fruits, cooked and uncooked, pastries and jellies, soups and coffee, wines and spices, sauces, relishes, and seasonings galore, and I am more or less disgusted with the whole business, and eat sparingly of but two or three dishes. At other times, alas! my appetite asserts itself, and I “go the pace” with the rest. Now, when all these things, so elaborately prepared, so daintily served, so “nicely” eaten, are disposed of and in the stomach, let me ask (without any desire to offend): Is there the slightest difference in the contents of the stomach of such a person and the stomach of a hog filled with swill? In the first case there is cocktail and caviar, olives and celery, oysters and soup, fish and entremes, entree and roast, game and punch, ice-cream and cheese, pastry and fruit, nuts and crackers, with water, coffee, tea, or wine to liquefy it all, all taken separately, but now mixed in one horrible mess within, and in the case of the hog they were mixed first and swallowed mixed instead of in “courses.”

HOPI WOMAN, WITH BODY PARTIALLY EXPOSED, GRINDING CORN AT THE MEAL TROUGH.

O men and women of the white race, of the superior civilization, quit such gluttony and disease-breeding courses! Get back to the Indian’s simplicity in diet. Learn the meaning of “low living and high thinking.” Stop pampering your sensual appetites and feeding your stomachs at the expense of your minds, aye, and at the expense of your souls, for men and women who thus live continuously, generally become selfish, indifferent to the sufferings of others, “proud stomached”—which means much more than it seems to mean—and incapable of the finer feelings.

Nor is this all that the Indian may teach us as to diet. While at times he eats everything he can lay his hands upon and also eats ravenously, in his normal condition he eats slowly and masticates thoroughly. Since Horace Fletcher wrote his most interesting and useful books on diet and life, the term “fletcherizing” has become almost universal amongst thoughtful people to express mastication to the point of liquifaction. But I was familiar with “fletcherizing” before I had ever heard of Mr. Fletcher. The Indians, with their parched corn, had taught me years before the benefit of thorough and complete mastication. I had gone off with a band of Indians on a hard week’s ride with no other food than parched corn and a few raisins. This was chewed and chewed and chewed by the hour, a handful of the grain making an excellent meal, and thoroughly nourishing the perfect bodies of these stalwart athletes, who never knew an ache or a pain, and who could withstand fatigue and hardship without a thought.

MY HAVASUPAI HOSTESS PARCHING CORN IN
A BASKET.

A marked and wonderful effect of thorough mastication is that it decreases the appetite from 10 to 15 per cent, and reduces the desire for flesh meat from 30 to 50 per cent. The more we masticate the less we desire to eat, and the more normal our appetites become. This in itself is a thing to be desired, for it is far easier not to have an abnormal appetite than it is to control it when it has fastened itself upon us.

Then, too, while Indians will often eat to repletion, and at their feasts indulge in disgusting gorging, they do know how to fast with calmness and equanimity. I am not prepared to say that they will fast voluntarily—except in the cases of those neophytes who are seeking some unusual powers or gifts from Those Above—yet I do know that several times I have been with them when fasting was obligatory because of the scarcity of food, and they accepted the condition without a murmur. I know a very prominent physician in San Francisco, who has an extensive practice, who pumps the food out of the stomachs of several of his gluttonous patients after their hearty French dinners. He defends his course of procedure by saying that his patients would not listen to him if he counseled fasting for even one meal, yet they are willing to allow him to remove the food after it is eaten, and to swallow some harmless “dope” that he gives them, because that is easy and requires no self-control.

I know the power of appetite; I know how hard it is to eat only that which the reason tells us is best. I know how hard it is to eat slowly and thoroughly masticate the food, but I also know that these things are imperative if one would have perfect health. Therefore, in spite of my many lapses into the old habits, I persist in asserting the good over the evil, and in teaching the good to others, in the hope that, in my own case, the good course will become the easiest to follow, and in the case of the young who listen to me they may learn the best way before they have fallen into the evil way.

There is one other thing the white race might learn from the Indian, and that is that the habitual use of flesh is not essential to health. When Captain Cook visited the Maoris of New Zealand, he found them a perfectly healthy people, and he states that he never observed a single person who appeared to have any bodily complaint. Nor, among the number that were seen naked, was once perceived the slightest eruption of the skin, nor the least mark which indicated that such eruptions had formerly existed. As Dr. Kress says:

“Another proof of the health of these people was the readiness with which wounds they at any time received healed up. In a man who had been shot with a musket-ball through the fleshy part of the arm, ‘his wound seemed well digested, and in so fair a way to be healed,’ says the Captain, ‘that if I had not known that no application had been made to it, I should have inquired with very interesting curiosity after the vulnerary herbs and surgical art of the country.’

“‘An additional evidence of the healthiness of the New Zealanders,’ he says, ‘is in the great number of old men found among them. Many of them appeared to be very ancient, and yet none of them were decrepit. Although they were not equal to the young in muscular strength, they did not come in the least behind them in regard to cheerfulness and vivacity.’”

At the advent of Captain Cook, the Maoris were practically vegetarians; they had no domestic or wild animals on the islands, hence could not have been flesh eaters.

While our Indians of the Southwest will eat some forms of flesh at times, they are, generally speaking, vegetarians. The Navahos scarcely ever eat meat while in their primitive condition, and they are proud, independent, high-spirited, vigorous, healthy, and strong. So with the Havasupais and Wallapais, and most of the aborigines of this region. The Apaches also are largely vegetarians, and yet are known as a fierce and warlike people. They are fierce when aroused, but when friendly are kindly disposed, honest, reliable and good workers, strong, athletic, vigorous, and healthy. These facts demonstrate that flesh meat is not necessary. Meat is another fetich of the civilization of the white race, before which we bow down in ignorant worship. The world would be far better off, in my judgment, and as the result of my observation and experience, if we ate no flesh at all. Personally I am never so well physically and my brain so active as when I live the vegetarian life, though when I am at the tables of meat eaters I eat whatever comes and make the best of it.

The experiences of thousands of healthy and vigorous white men demonstrate that meat is not necessary to the highest development. Weston, the great pedestrian, is both a teetotaler and vegetarian; Bernarr Macfadden and several of his muscular helpers are practical vegetarians; and athletes, business men, lawyers, judges, doctors, clergymen, and many others testify to the beneficial effects of the vegetarian diet. There is no man in the civilized world to-day that works as hard and as continuously, physically as well as mentally, as Dr. J. H. Kellogg of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. He is a rigid vegetarian, and seldom eats more than one meal a day. Yet he works from 16 to 20 hours daily, edits two magazines, writes continually for scientific magazines and periodicals, attends to a vast correspondence, is the business head of the greatest sanitarium in the world, consults annually with thousands of patients, and keeps daily watch of their condition, gives numberless lectures, is always experimenting on foods and surgical appliances and inventing new instruments and methods for curing disease, and at the same time performs more surgical operations, perhaps, with less fatal results, than any other surgeon in the country. Besides this he is the president of the medical college, and lecturer to the students, and gives many lectures to the Medical Missionary Classes, and withal, finds time and strength to confer with, direct the education of, and give personal love to the ten or fifteen children he has adopted into his home and made his own.

Here is an additional item which adds strength to what I have written:

“The attention of medical men has recently been called to the case of Gustav Nordin, a hardy Swede who paddled his own canoe from Stockholm to Paris, reaching there in robust health after the long voyage, during which he lived on apples, milk, water, and bread.

“The New York Herald states that this dangerous and arduous voyage was undertaken by the Swede to show what could be done by a man who has given up meat, tea, coffee, wine, beer, spirits, and tobacco. He prides himself in eclipsing those ‘vegetarians’ who continue the use of tea and condiments.

“When in America, at the age of eighteen, Nordin was suffering so from dyspepsia that he could not take ordinary food. He therefore began a diet of fruit, principally apples, whereby he attained to his present robust condition of health.”

So, meat-eating, alcoholic-liquor-drinking white race, cast aside your high-headedness and pride, your dietetic errors and ill-health, at one and the same time, and go and learn of the Indian simplicity of diet, wise limitation of your dietary, careful and thorough mastication, and abstention from all flesh foods.

CHAPTER XI
THE INDIAN AND EDUCATION

Take it all in all, I think I believe more in the Indian’s system of education than our own,—I mean, in the principles involved. Our education is largely an education of books. We teach from books, we study from books, we get our ideas from books. Joaquin Miller’s reply to Elbert Hubbard, before quoted, seems to many people to be a foolish remark. But I see a profound thought in it. It was the poet’s protest against the too great use of books. He regards books as subversive of individual thought. He contends that books retard and prevent thought, and that we read, not to stimulate thought, but to deaden it. And undoubtedly too much reading and dependence upon books does deaden and destroy not only thought, but, alas! far worse still, the power to indulge in individual thought. Hence books are often a hindrance and a curse instead of a help and a blessing.

The Indian has no books. While he has tradition and legend, myth and story, he has no written word. Everything that is, as differentiated from everything that is supposed, in his life has to be personally learned by individual contact with the things themselves. Botany is the study of flowers, not of words about flowers. There is but one way we can really study botany, and that is out in the fields with the flower growing before us. It must be seen day in and day out from its planting until its fruition. All its development must be known and understood. The properties of its fruit, its roots, its stem, its leaves, for food, medicinal, manufacturing, or other purposes are all connected with the study. It is well to know the names of the plants, the names of all parts of plants, and the families and species to which they belong, but these latter things, important and interesting though they be, are but secondary or tertiary as compared with the primary out-door personal and intimate knowledge I have referred to.

Those who think the Indian uneducated should read Charles Eastman’s (Ohiyesa) book telling of his boyhood days with his Sioux parents and grandparents. Eastman is a full-blooded Sioux, and though later educated at Dartmouth College, still shows by his writings and words how much he reveres his wise teachers of the open air and the woods.

The fact is, that in matters pertaining to personal observation the Indian children are far ahead of our own brightest and smartest children; they observe the slightest deviations from the regular order. Who does not know of the Indian’s power in trailing. I know Navahos, Mohaves, Hopis, Havasupais, and others who will follow the dimmest trail with unerring certainty, and tell you the details of the actions of the person or animal trailed. This is education of a wonderfully useful kind; a kind that it would be well to give more of to our own children. Indeed, I have been saying, both privately and publicly, for many years, and I here repeat it, that if my children were trained to observe and reflect upon what they observed I should not care if they never went to school until they were grown up to young manhood and womanhood.

That keen, though unusual thinker, Ernest Crosby, in one of his books, presented the following, which perfectly meets my ideas and suggests what I mean in regard to the Indian: