What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

by George Wharton James

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.