What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

by George Wharton James

A HAVASUPAI MOTHER, PROUD
OF HER MAN-CHILD.

Mothers who neglect to thus instruct and care for their daughters at the adolescent period are criminals both to their children and to the race. Among the ancient Greeks such a mother would have been regarded as a monstrosity; yet many mothers have confessed to their physicians they have never had one word of converse with their daughters upon this most important subject. When I see children going to school at this adolescent period, and being forced by our competitive system of education to strain every nerve to cram the required amount of facts into their brains, I do not wonder that we have so many sickly women who are incapable of being the mothers of healthy and happy children. Far better that our children be not educated in chemistry, and literature, in physical science and art, than that they unfit themselves for the happy relations of a beautiful marriage and sweet and tender parenthood. For let the new or the old woman say what she will, the divinely ordered plan is that women shall be wives, and happy wives at that, capable of making their husbands happy, or at least of contributing their share to that end, and also that they shall know the joys of maternity. Unhappy indeed is that woman whose physical condition is such that she refuses to know the sweet touch of her own baby’s body, and denies herself the blessed privilege of training its soul for a beautiful and useful life.

The Indian mother sees to it that her daughter is early taught her future possibilities and the will of Those Above in regard to her, and the growing woman would as soon shirk the responsibilities of her sex as she would refuse to eat. The consequences are that normal births with Indian women are practically painless and entirely free from danger. I have known a woman to deliver herself of her child, sever the umbilicus, and then walk half a mile to the creek, walk into it with the baby, and give herself and the child a good washing, then return to her camp, suckle the little one, and proceed to attend to her duties as if nothing had happened. At another time I saw a woman, less than half an hour after her child was born, start off for a heavy load of wood. Their freedom from constricting waist-bands, their absolute freedom of body, their nasal and deep breathing, their muscular exercise through life, their open air sleeping and living,—all have much to do with these easy births.

THE AUTHOR DESCRIBING THE SYMBOLISM OF THE PAIUTI BASKET DESIGN.

To a good Indian woman, also, there is nothing more evil than to circumvent the will of Those Above by refusing to have children. Such a woman would be almost a monstrosity to an Indian, who would be unable to comprehend the mental workings of such an abnormality. Children are to be desired, to be longed for, and to become a joyous possession. In the making of some of their basketry the Paiuti women weave a design which shows the opening between the upper and lower worlds through which the souls of all children born into this upper world must come. By a correspondence of the symbol with the thing symbolized, the Paiuti weaver believes that if she closes up this opening in the basket, she will render herself incapable of bearing any more children. Therefore, even though you were to offer her her weight in money, you could not persuade her to close up the aperture in the basket’s design. This would be circumventing the will of the gods.

The same law, too, applies to the suckling of her child. The Indian mother never dreams of foregoing this healthful duty and pleasure. She regards it as one of her special joys, in which she is superior to man. And just as the Paiuti weaver refuses to close the aperture in her basket, so does the Zuni woman refuse to close, except with averted eyes and a prayer that the gods will see she did it with unseeing eyes, the tiny aperture in the mammæ of the water bottles which she makes of clay in imitation of the human breasts. She dare not, even thus in symbol, suggest the closing of her own maternal founts.

Ah! beautiful simplicity and joy of naturalness. The God of men and women surely knew what was good for them when He set in motion the forces that created them. In harmony with His will and purpose we are healthy, happy, normal beings, living lives of purity, progress, and peace. In opposition to His will we are unhealthy, unhappy, abnormal beings, full of wretchedness, impurity, and misery. In many things the Indian, too simple to go far away from the Divine precepts which come to him through contact with nature, is wiser than we. Let us then put on the garment of simplicity, seek to know the will of God, and with hearts like little children learn the true way, and then seek for courage to walk therein.

A HEALTHY AND HAPPY PIMA MOTHER WHOSE BABY WAS GLADLY WELCOMED.