<h2 id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII<br/> <span class="medium">THE INDIAN AND SELF-RESTRAINT</span></h2>
<p class="drop"><span class="upper">Few</span> of the superior white race would think of looking
to the Indian for examples of self-restraint, but
I can give them here one of the most marked examples
in history. Before the advent of the white man in
America the various aboriginal tribes roamed over the
plains, the mountains, the foothills, and in the forests,
and with snare and trap, gin and bow and arrow
caught or slew the game needed for food. These
tribes were often hostile to each other; they trespassed
on each other’s hunting-grounds, and in consequence,
often fought in deadly wars which came nigh to exterminating
some of them. They were not regardful,
therefore, one would think, of the rights or needs of
others than themselves to the game they hunted; and
it is absurd (so the school-books would tell us) to
assume that they would be provident or careful to
preserve game for the future. Hence they would
slay ruthlessly (the same authorities would doubtless
declare), indifferent as to the days to come and their
future needs, merely seeking food for to-day, and
gorging upon it to repletion. In this case, however,
the school-books would be wrong. In the hundreds
or thousands of years that the Indians controlled this
great continent they never once “killed out” any one
of their hunting-fields.</p>
<p>When the white race appeared upon the scene,
game of every kind,—fish, flesh, and fowl,—was plentiful.
Trappers and hunters went up and down the
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">230</span>
rivers, where beaver and otter, musk and mink, lived,
and through the forests where birds nested and deer,
antelope, and other game browsed; climbed the mountains
where bear and puma lodged, and ever their
bales of skins, furs, peltries, and hides loaded the
canoes and the decks of returning vessels. Here was
the best proof of the Indian’s self-restraint and provident
foresight for the future, in that the white man
found such an abundance of all kinds of game ready to
his hand.</p>
<p>Then came the master mind of an Astor who
valued money more than the future. What did it
matter to him that game of a hundred kinds disappeared
from the face of the earth provided he could
make a fortune? What cared he that men and
women would starve in the days to come so long as he
could pile up his hoard of pelts, and sell them to add to
his wealth? Modern commercialism, that damned
and damning spirit of our civilization that sees nothing
but dollars, that would shut out the glory of the sun
rather than miss the ten-cent piece close at hand,
entered into the game. Then the sportsman and the
pot hunter of the white race came also, and between
them and the Buffalo Bills who shot down buffaloes
by the thousand for food to supply the builders of the
transcontinental railways, in half a generation they
cleared the prairies of the millions of noble buffaloes
which used to roam in vast herds, left nothing but
slender bands or solitary animals of the moose and
elk, and drove these into almost inaccessible solitudes
for self-preservation, and nearly stripped the country
of deer, antelope, wild turkeys, and sage hens. Then
they passed laws to protect “game,” making a close
season so that the Indians, who, in their days of freedom
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">231</span>
and wildness, needed no law but their own good sense
and self-restraint, cannot now shoot at all save in the
few days when the restrictions are removed. So that,
practically speaking, the Indian now has no hunting-ground;
he is debarred from obtaining wild game for
food for himself and family, and all because of the
infernal greed and equally infernal brutality of the
pot-hunter. Here, then, is a national proof—for
what I have said is practically true of every state in the
country—that the white race has much to learn of
self-restraint from the despised Indian. Self-restraint
as to greed,—for, until the advent of the white, one
Indian never sought to build up mere wealth at the
expense of or to the injury or detriment of his fellows.
This was the white man’s way, not his! He practised
self-restraint, for the Indians knew and realized that if
the animals were killed too closely the species would
soon become extinct, and future generations, if not
themselves, have to suffer.</p>
<p>To most people the Indian is a careless creature,
content if his belly is filled to-day, improvident for the
future, and therefore unwise, unthoughtful, and to be
condemned. May it not be in this apparent carelessness
for the future the Indian is wiser than we, that he
is deliberately exercising a beneficial restraint? Think
of the wild hurly-burly of our struggle to accumulate,
and then consider the expense, the worry, the endless
care of protecting that which we have accumulated.
One far wiser than the sages of to-day once declared
that we were to “take no thought for the morrow,”
and in His whole teaching and life reprobated the
struggle for wealth, and the life of selfish ease that
comes with its attainment.</p>
<p>One of the greatest curses of our present age and
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">232</span>
civilization is love of ease, craving for luxury, desire
to “have a good time.” We worship money because
it brings these things, forgetful of the teachings of
history that luxury and ease beget sensuality and vice,
and these in turn beget disease, decay, and death.
I am opposed to great money-getting on this account,
and would not amass a fortune if I could. As for
leaving large sums of money to my children, especially
my sons, nothing could ever induce me to do it. If
much money should ever come to me I hereby serve
notice upon all concerned that I shall spend it, wisely
and usefully, as my best judgment dictates, as soon
as I can, and anyhow get rid of it so that no son of
mine shall say that the money I left him helped him
on the downward path.</p>
<p>The Indian knows well the lesson that physical
health comes only by the exercise of the body, therefore
he definitely refuses any course of life that would
prevent it; he welcomes for himself, his wife, his
sons, and his daughters physical work; he also knows
that mental and spiritual improvement come only
by the exercise of mental and spiritual faculties, and
he shuns everything that stultifies them. Did he
know English, he could sing with Thomas Gray:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“From toil he wins his spirits light,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">From busy day the peaceful night:<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Rich, from the very want of wealth,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">In heaven’s best treasures, peace and health.”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p>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
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">233</span>
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.</p>
<p>Now, while the specific acts of restraint of the Indian
may not appeal to me, <i>the spirit of them</i> is much needed
by our whole race. Self-restraint, self-denial, self-control,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">234</span>
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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i2">“Then, welcome each rebuff<br/></span>
<span class="i0">That turns earth’s smoothness rough,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Each sting that bids, not sit, nor stand, but go!<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Be our joys three parts pain,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Strive and hold cheap the strain,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Learn, never mind the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">235</span></p>
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