CHAPTER XV
THE INDIAN AND THE SEX QUESTION
Having studied medicine somewhat in my life, I have been permitted as a “medicine man” to know more of the intimate life of the Indian women than many white men. In this article I propose to give the results of many observations in this field, with full assurance that there are many things the white woman may learn from the Indian, both in her treatment of herself and her children.
In the first place, the period of adolescence in both boys and girls is regarded with the importance it deserves.
The white race has much to learn from the Indian in its treatment of boys and girls at this age. My blood is made to boil almost every day when I am in our cities and see young girls, just entering into maidenhood, coming home from school, anæmic, pale, nervous, irritable, almost victims of St. Vitus’s dance, often dyspeptic or with a cough fastening its hold upon them, because their parents are so blind and foolish as to prefer book and school education to health. To me such parents are guilty of cruelty and criminality, and I would sooner imprison them and take away the control of their children from them than I would the forger or the housebreaker. They are cruel in that they are either ignorantly or wilfully ruining the health,—perhaps for life,—of their children, and they are criminal in that by so doing they are injuring the future welfare of the state. Boys, too, are treated exactly the same at this time as at any other, and when the great mystery of sex awakening is upon them, they are sent to school as usual, treated with the same untrue answers to the questions that arise that they were given to quiet their minds when they were little more than babies. I am thankful there has been much of an awakening in this matter during the past twenty years, and that I have had an active part in it. I think it was in 1888 that I published a small book on sex teaching for the young.[4] It is as imperative to warn the young to-day as it was then. The Indian boy is instructed fully into the mystery of sex just as soon and as simply as he is in every other question that arises, and at puberty he is made the subject of specific ceremonies that teach him the meaning of the change that is coming over him. He is treated with a new dignity, is formally recognized as having entered man’s estate, and is sent out into the woods or the solitude of the desert “to come to himself.”
[4] “The Guiding Light,” in two parts, to be had only from the author, 1098 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, Cal. In paper, 50 cents; in cloth, $1.00 postpaid.
In the case of girls, ceremonies of instruction, purification, and dedication are almost universally observed. The adolescent is set apart from her fellows, and the elder women give her definite and full instruction as to what the change that is taking place in her life means. She is shown the importance of the new function, and how much the welfare of the race depends upon it. Then she is made to undergo ceremonies that last for several days, in which her body and all its functions are dedicated to the tribe. She is one of the future mothers now, and, as such, is entitled to all respect and consideration. There is no foolish reserve, no “modesty,” so-called, which arrogates to itself the right to criticise the wisdom of God in creating human beings male and female that they may marry and propagate their kind upon the earth. For, wherever one finds the sort of “modesty” that is ashamed of natural and God-given functions, there is either a mental perversion for which the victim is to be pitied, or a moral perversion which is to be reprobated. Every Indian girl is given fully to understand what the function means, with all its possibilities, and she is taught to pray that, when the time comes, she may have a lover, and that he may be a good husband, and that, in due time, she may be the happy and healthy mother of many happy and healthy children.
And in some tribes there are certain shrines where the girls are taught to go and offer their prayers that lovers, husbands, and children—not one or two of the latter, but many—may be given to them at the will of the gods above.
This is to dignify sex, to train the girls that wifehood and motherhood are holy and to be desired, and that they are not matters merely to jest and joke about, or to talk in secret whispers about one to another, as if the very subject were unholy and unclean.
Then a matter of practical healthfulness is observed that white parents need very much to learn, it appears to me, especially in this age of scholastic crowding and mental overworking. Each month the girl is required to rest, in order that she may preserve and maintain her body in perfectly healthy condition. She may go where she will, but she must be quiet and still, in order that the function may be not disturbed, and that its regularity may be established. Not only this, but this habit of rest is kept up so long as the function continues through life. Even on the march a woman may stay behind (if she so desires) and rest for a day or so. The result of this rest at such times is shown in the strength and vigor the women show during pregnancy and at birth. They seem to store up strength, and, as I shall later show, childbirth to most of them is no more a time of peril, pain, or distress than is breathing.
