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What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

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<h2 id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX THE INDIAN AND REPINING</h2> In all my association with Indians, I cannot recall a single instance of repining, regret over the unalterable events of the past, weeping or wailing over joys lost, demoralizing self-pity, or magnified distress because “we have seen better days.” The simple, unpretentious, really democratic life of the Indian disposes of these latter ills to which the white race is heir by rendering them impossible, and repining and self-pity seem to have no place in their vocabulary. They weep and wail when their loved ones die; and they gather together and pray if drought or other natural evils destroy their crops, but when the weeping is done it is done, and life’s duties are taken up without constant repining or self-pity. What has happened has happened. Nothing can alter it. It is the will of Those Above, or whether it is or not it IS, and that is enough. Hence why complain, why protest. Accept the inevitable. Leave it alone. Let the dead past bury its dead. Do the work of to-day; never mind the woe of yesterday. This seems to me to be the Indian attitude. A kind of proud acquiescence, a manly, womanly recognition of facts, and a willingness to face them and thus triumph over them. Instead of magnifying their sorrows they minimize them by constant labor and by doing the very opposite, viz., magnifying their joys. Often have I heard this done. A widow speaking of her lost husband, and immediately referring 208 in tones of joy to her boys and girls, her fine corn-field, her peach orchard,—her blessings, in fact. It is simply impossible for any one to estimate the amount of time, strength, energy, and life that have been wasted by the white race in lamenting, repining, weeping, over things that could neither be helped nor changed. And how absurd such lamentation is. If an evil can be remedied, remedy it. If a wrong can be righted, right it. But to waste valuable time, strength, and energy in vain repining and self-pity is a crime that no Indian is so foolish as to commit. It is left to the white race to thus show its superiority! This comes from two or three causes. First: Our race, mainly our women, are not as healthy physically as the Indian, and where physical health is lacking it is so easy to yield to the force of evil circumstance. Strong men or women can force themselves into physical and mental activity and these bring solace and forgetfulness of the pains, ills, and sorrows of the past. Second: The very ease and luxury of our lives which all white people so much covet, give us time and opportunity to sit down and study over sources of sadness, while on the other hand, the Indian woman has her daily work that she must perform, willy nilly, and thus is kept from the contemplation of her sorrows. Third: There is in the Indian that calm serenity of mind and soul that belong only to either very childlike or exceedingly cultured natures. With the Indian it is childlike acceptance of the will of the gods; with Browning, it was the calm philosophy of the highest culture. Unfortunately for most of us, we have lost the religious simplicity of our ancestors, our childlike faith and trust, and have not yet attained to the serenity of the philosopher. 209 I write this brief chapter merely to call attention to the facts, and to urge upon the white race the necessity, if it would preserve its serenity, of either reverting to the simple faith of the Indian, or of cultivating a religious philosophy that will produce an equal serenity and equanimity in the face of trial, sorrow, misfortune or death. 210 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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