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.”
