And he puts into practical life what another of our sages well expressed when he said: “Occupation and exercise are the hand-maidens of purity and strength.” Too often we merely read these wise words. The Indian lives them. In this the white race can well imitate him. He faces hardship and danger with eagerness that thereby he may develop courage and strength. He takes his sons and punishes them in what we should call a cruel manner to develop fortitude; he sends them out into the desert, mountain, and forest solitudes that there they may meet and talk with Those Above. Every youth or young man who hopes to be a “medicine man” goes out to some such solitary place. He takes no food, no nourishment of any kind, and fasts several days and nights. He drinks nothing but a little water. He sleeps as little as possible. Then if spirits come to him he must obey the teachings and requirements of each one. These teachings and requirements demand the suppression of the natural instincts and desires, and the exercise of positive restraints to an extent that the greatest religious devotee of the white race would scarcely be willing to submit to. One spirit demands that water be drank but once a day, no matter how hot the weather; another that no food shall be taken on three days out of each week; another that no hide shall be made into moccasins, and so on. This, therefore, means a life of self-denial and restraint that surpasses anything known in civilization. Our Catholic priests take a vow of perpetual chastity and obedience, the members of the religious orders go further and pledge themselves to perpetual poverty, but these Indian medicine men, who accept the aid of many spirits,—ten, twenty, and even thirty,—are limited and restricted in their lives to a degree that is as astonishing as it is, to the majority of the white race, unknown.
Now, while the specific acts of restraint of the Indian may not appeal to me, the spirit of them is much needed by our whole race. Self-restraint, self-denial, self-control, are the bulwarks of spiritual power. He only is strong in spirit who can control himself, hence I would that the white race would learn these lessons from the Indian.
Browning thoroughly believed in this spirit of self-restraint, self-sacrifice, self-control. In his Rabbi Ben Ezra he preaches some strong doctrines. Nothing is more needed to-day than the following robust and forceful words put into practical every-day living:
“Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids, not sit, nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three parts pain,
Strive and hold cheap the strain,
Learn, never mind the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE INDIAN AND AFFECTATION
Most people of the white race may learn from the Indian in the matter of affectation. Few of us are simple and natural in our social manners. My own family often joke me, when, in answering the telephone, I respond in what they call my “dressy tone.” The other day a lady, whose husband is a college professor, mistook me for a distinguished eastern psychologist whose surname happens to be the same as mine. Until she discovered her mistake she “minced and mouthed” in a most ludicrous fashion (how I wish she could have seen herself as I saw her!) merely because she thought I was a prominent man in the field wherein her husband was a more humble member. The criticism on my own “dressy tone” is a perfectly just one. I find myself, often, “putting on style” because I want to appear “my best.” After due consideration I have decided to confess that—like most people—I have a variety of “celluloid smiles” which unconsciously I put on or off as occasion requires. We are not simple, not natural in our relationships one with another. We feel that we must “make an impression,” that we must “appear well.” The result is we are unnatural, affected, often deceptive, and many a time disagreeable. Affectation in speech and manner is always a sign of mental meanness,—of what is commonly called vulgarity, and is never to be commended but is always to be condemned.
APACHE INDIAN WHO REFUSED TO “PUT ON STYLE” TO PLEASE THE WHITE MAN.
On the other hand, if the President of the United States were to visit a tribe of uncontaminated Indians, as, for instance, the Navahos, they would treat him in exactly the same manner as they would the humblest citizen; except, of course, that if the president asked for a pow-wow they would give him one, and treat his words with respectful deference. But there would be no affectation in their dealings with him, no putting on of airs or style. With frank, open directness, with the respect they show, as a rule, to each other, and no more, they would listen to all he had to say and give hearty and manly response of approval or disapproval. They have no “company manners,” no changes of voice which are used according to the social status of the listener. There are no snobs among them. “A man’s a man for a’ that,” no matter whether he wears an old army overcoat and a top hat or merely a tight skin and his gee-string.
The white race, too, is fearfully affected in its pretense at knowing more than it can know. We are all ashamed to say, “I don’t know!” I believe this applies more truthfully to women than to men. Since the era of the woman’s club, the gentle sex has been wild to accumulate knowledge, and sadly too often, it is content to appear to have the knowledge rather than appear ignorant. One has but to look over the programs of a score or a hundred women’s clubs, as I have recently done, to see proof of this in the vast range many of them take in a single season. They crowd into an hour’s or two hours’ session what no person living can get a reasonable grasp of in less than from three months to a year of fairly consistent and persistent study. They jump from “The Romantic School of Music,” one week to “The Effect of the Renaissance upon Gothic Art,” the next, and the third week finds them swallowing a concentrated pill on “The Poets of the Victorian Era,” while on the fourth they completely master all that can be learned of “The Franciscan Mission Epoch in California and Its Influence upon the Indians.”