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What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

<h2 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II THE WHITE RACE AND ITS CIVILIZATION</h2> I am by no means a blind worshiper of our so-called “higher” and “advanced” civilization. I do not think we have advanced yet as far as the Greeks in some things. Our civilization, in many respects, is sham, shoddy, gingerbread, tinsel, false, showy, meretricious, deceptive. If I were making this book an arraignment of our civilization there would be no lack of counts in the indictment, and a plethora of evidence could be found to justify each charge. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG id="i_028" src="images/i_028.jpg" alt="" /> INDIAN BEADWORK OF RATTLESNAKE DESIGN </div> As a nation, we do not know how to eat rationally; few people sleep as they should; our drinking habits could not be much worse; our clothing is stiff, formal, conventional, hideous, and unhealthful; our headgear the delirium tremens of silliness. Much of our architecture is weakly imitative, flimsy, without dignity, character, or stability; much of our religion a profession rather than a life; our scholastic system turns out anæmic and half-trained pupils who are forceful demonstrators of the truth that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” And as for our legal system, if a body of lunatics from the nearest asylum could not concoct for us a better hash of jurisprudence than now curses our citizenship I should be surprised. No honest person, whether of the law or out of it, denies that 29 “law”—which Browning so forcefully satirizes as “the patent truth-extracting process,”—has become a system of formalism, of precedent, of convention, of technicality. A case may be tried, and cost the city, county, or state thousands of dollars; a decision rendered, and yet, upon a mere technicality that does not affect the real merits of the case one iota, the decision will be reversed, and either the culprit—whose guilt no one denies—is discharged, or a new trial, with its attendant expense, is ordered. The folly of such a system! The sheer idiocy of men wasting time and strength and energy upon such puerile foolishness. I verily believe the world would be bettered if the whole legal system, from supreme court of the United States down to pettiest justice court, could be abolished at one blow, and a reversion made to the decisions of the old men of each community known for their good common sense, fearlessness, and integrity. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_030" src="images/i_030.jpg" alt="" /> RAMONA AND HER STAR BASKET. </div> It may be possible that some who read these words will deem me an incontinent and general railer against our civilization. Such a conclusion would be an egregious error. I rail against nothing in it but that which I deem bad,—bad in its effect upon the bodies, minds, or souls of its citizens. I do not rail against the wireless telegraph, the ocean cables, the railway, the telephone, the phonograph, the pianoforte, the automobile, the ice machine, refrigerating machine, gas light, gas for heating and cooking, the electric light and heater, electric railways, newspapers, magazines, books, and the thousand and one things for which this age and civilization of ours is noted. But I do rail against the abuse and perversion of these things. I do rail against the system that permits gamblers to swindle the common people by watering the stock of wireless telegraphy, 30 cable, railway, or other companies. I enjoy some phonographs amazingly, but I rail against my neighbor’s running his phonograph all night. I think coal-oil a good thing, but I rail against the civilization that allows a few men to so control this God-given natural product that they can amass in a few short years fortunes that so far transcend the fortunes of the kings of ancient times that they make the wealth of Crœsus look like “thirty cents.” I believe thoroughly in education; but I rail earnestly, sincerely, and constantly against that so-called education (with which nearly all our present systems are more or less allied) of valuing the embalmed knowledge of books more than the personal, practical, experimental knowledge of the things themselves. 31 I enjoy books, and would have a library as large as that of the British Museum if I could afford it; but I rail persistently against the civilization that leads its members to accept things they find in books more than the things they think out for themselves. Joaquin Miller seemed to say a rude and foolish thing when he answered Elbert Hubbard’s question, “Where are your books?” with a curt, “To hell with books. When I want a book I write one;” and yet he really expressed a deep and profound thought. He wanted to show his absolute contempt for the idea that we read books in order to help thought. The fact is, the reading too much in books, and of too many books, is a definite hindrance to thought—a positive preventive of thought. I do not believe in predigested food for either body, mind, or soul; hence I am opposed to those features of our civilization that give us food that needs only to be swallowed (not masticated and enjoyed) to supply nutriment; that give us thought all ready prepared for us that we must accept or be regarded as uneducated; those crumbs of social customs that a frivolous four hundred condescend to allow to fall from their tables to us, and that we must observe or be ostracized as “boors” and “vulgar”; and those features of our theological system that give us predigested spiritual food that we must accept and follow or be damned. I am willing to go and feed with the Scotch and the horses (vide Johnson’s foolish remark about oatmeal), and be regarded as uneducated and be ostracized both as a boor and a vulgarian, and even be damned in words, which, thank God, is quite as far as He allows any one human being to “damn” another. For I am opposed to these things one and all. 32 I am not a pessimist about our civilization: I am an optimist. Yet I often find my optimism strongly tinged with pessimistic color. And how can it be otherwise? Can any thinking man have much respect—any, in fact—for that phase of his civilization which permits the building of colossal fortunes by the monopolization of the sale of necessities, when the poor who are compelled to buy these necessities are growing poorer and poorer each year? <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG id="i_032" src="images/i_032.jpg" alt="" /> INDIAN BEADWORK OF GREEK FRET DESIGN. </div> Can I respect any civilization that for the 125 years of its existence has refused to pass laws for the preservation of the purity of the food of its poor? The rich can buy what and where they choose, but for the whole period of our existence we have been so bound, hand and foot, by the money-makers who have vitiated our food supply that they might add a few more millions to their dirty hoard of ungodly dollars that we have closed our eyes to the physical and spiritual demoralization that has come to the poor by the poisoned concoctions handed out to them—under protection of United States laws—as foods. Can I respect an educational institution that educates the minds of its children at the expense of their bodies? That has so little common sense and good judgment as to be putting its children through fierce competitive examinations when they should be strengthening their bodies at the critical age of adolescence? Can I bow down before the civilization whose 33 highest educational establishments—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, New York, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, followed by hosts of others of lesser institutions—every year send out from five to thirty per cent of their students broken down in health? What is the good of all the book-learning that all the ages have amassed unless one has physical health to enjoy it? Only this last year a Harvard graduate came to me who had taken high degree in the study of law and was adjudged eminently prepared to begin to practice his profession. But his health was gone. He was a nervous and physical wreck. His physicians commanded complete rest for a year, and suggested that five years would be none too long for him to spend in recuperation. When this young man asked me to give him my candid expressions upon the matter, I asked him if he thought imbeciles could have made a worse mess of his “education” than had the present system, which had cultivated his intellect, but so disregarded the needs of his body that his intellect was powerless to act. Let the wails of agony of the uncounted dead who have been hurried to their graves by this idolatrous worship of a senseless, godless, heartless Moloch called “education” answer for me when people ask me to respect this feature of our higher civilization, and to these wails let there be added those of awakened parents who have seen, when too late, into what acts akin to murder their blind worship of this idol had led them. Add to these the cries of pain from ten thousand beds of affliction occupied by those still living, but whose bodies have “broken down” as the result of “over-study.” <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_034" src="images/i_034.jpg" alt="" /> A SABOBA INDIAN WITH BASKET IN WHICH IS SYMBOLIZED THE HISTORY OF HIS TRIBE. </div> Then add to the vast pyramid of woe the heartaches of hopes banished, of ambitions thwarted, of 34 desires and aims completely lost, and one can well understand why I am not a worshiper at this shrine. If I were to choose—as every parent must for his young children who are not yet capable of thought—between a happy, because physically healthy, life, though uneducated by the schools, and an educated and unhappy, because unhealthy, life for children, I would say: Give me ignorance (of books and schools) and health, rather than education (of books and 35 schools) and a broken down, nervous, irritable body. But it is by no means necessary to have uneducated children, even though they should never see a school. While I now write (I am enjoying a few days on the “rim” of the Grand Canyon) I am meeting daily a remarkable family. The man is far above the average in scholastic and book education. He is a distinguished physician, known not only within the bounds of his own large state, but throughout the whole United States and Europe; his methods are largely approved by men at the head of the profession, and his lucrative and enormous practice demonstrates the success of his system, with the complete approval of the most conservative of his rigidly conservative profession. He was until quite recently a professor in one of the largest universities of the United States, and was therefore competent from inside knowledge to pass judgment upon the methods of the highest educational establishments. He has money enough to place his two daughters wherever he chooses, and to spend most of his time near them. Yet he has deliberately (and I think most wisely) kept them out of school, and made the strength and vigor of their bodies his first consideration. Both ride horseback (astride, of course) with the poise and confidence of skilled vaqueros; both can undertake long journeys, horseback or afoot, that would exhaust most young men students; and now at 15 and 17 years of age they are models of physical health and beauty, and at the same time the elder sister is better educated in the practical, sane, useful, living affairs of men and women than any girl of her age I have ever met. I take this object-lesson, therefore, as another demonstration of the truth of my position, and again I refuse to bow down 36 before the great fetich of our modern civilization—“scholastic education.” There have been wonderful civilizations in the past,—Persia, Asia Minor, Etruria, Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Moors,—and yet they are gone. A few remnants are left to us in desert temples, sand-buried propylæ, dug-up vases and carvings, glorious architecture, sublime marbles, and soul-stirring literature. Where are the peoples who created these things? Why could they not propagate their kind sufficiently well to at least keep their races intact, and hold what they had gained? We know they did not do it. Why? Call it moral or physical deterioration, or both, it is an undeniable fact that physical weakness rendered the descendants of these peoples incapable of living upon their ancestors’ high planes, or made them an easy prey to a stronger and more vigorous race. I am fully inclined to the belief that it was their moral declensions that led to their physical deterioration; yet I also firmly believe that a better and truer morality can be sustained upon a healthy and vigorous body than upon one which is diseased and enervated. Hence I plead, with intense earnestness, for a better physical life for our growing boys and girls, our young men and women, and especially for our prospective parents. Healthy progeny cannot be expected from diseased stock. The fathers and mothers of the race must be strengthened physically. Every child should be healthily, happily, and cheerfully born, as well as borne. The sunshine of love should smile down from the faces of both parents into the child’s eyes the first moment of its life. Thus the elixir of joy enters its heart, and joy is as essential to the proper development of a child as sunshine is to that of a flower. This 37 38 is a physical world, even though it be only passing phenomena, and upon its recognition much of our happiness depends. Our Christian Science friends see in physical inharmony only an error of mortal mind, to be demonstrated over by divine mind. That demonstration, however, produces the effect we call physical health. This is what I long for, seek after, strive for, both for myself, my family, my children, my race. Any and all means that can successfully be used to promote that end I believe in and heartily commend. Let us call it what we will, and attain it as how we may, the desirable thing in our national and individual life to-day is health,—health of the whole man, body, mind, soul. Because I firmly believe the Indians have ideas that, if carried out, will aid us to attain this glorious object, I have dared to suggest that this proud and haughty white race may sit at their feet and learn of them. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_037" src="images/i_037.jpg" alt="" /> DAT-SO-LA-LE, THE WASHOE BASKET WEAVER, SOME OF WHOSE BASKETS HAVE SOLD FOR FABULOUS PRICES. </div> I myself began life handicapped with serious ill health, and for twenty-two years was seldom free from pain. Nervous irritability required constant battling. But when I began to realize the benefit of life spent in God’s great out-of-doors, and devoted much of my time to climbing up and down steep canyon walls, riding over the plains and mountains of Nevada and California, wandering through the aseptic wastes of the deserts of the Southwest, rowing and swimming in the waters of the great Colorado River, sleeping nightly in the open air, and in addition, coming in intimate contact with many tribes of Indians, and learning from them how to live a simple, natural, and therefore healthy life,—these things not only gave to me almost perfect health, but have suggested the material of which this book is made. 39 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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