What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

<h2 id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV<br/> <span class="medium">THE INDIAN AND RELIGIOUS WORSHIP</span></h2> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_250" src="images/i_250.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">THE DIGNIFIED AND SOLEMN ROW OF SNAKE PRIESTS IN THE HOPI SNAKE DANCE CEREMONIES.</p> </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_251" src="images/i_251.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">HOPI INDIANS AT THEIR FLUTE CEREMONIES. THIS IS A PRAYER FOR WATER TO FLOW INTO THEIR DESERT SPRINGS.</p> </div> <p class="drop"><span class="upper">Another</span> thing that the civilized of this age may well learn from the Indian is intense earnestness and sincerity in all matters of religion. It is a painful thing for me to go into many of our city churches. Well-dressed women and girls and young men will sit and whisper through even the most sacred parts of the service. Indeed, it is the exception, not the rule, that I ever go to a service without being outraged by some such exhibition of rudeness, ill manners, and irreverence. This kind of thing is unknown with the Indian. Religion is a serious thing. Fun is fun, and when he goes in for fun he does it with thoroughness and completeness; but when his religious instincts are called upon, he puts aside all fun, and enters into <span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">251</span> the spirit of the occasion with becoming reverence and solemnity. It is civilized people who go into churches of other faiths than their own and gape and “gawp” around, whispering the while to one another at the strange things they see. Protestants are particularly guilty of this serious vice. Roman Catholics are so trained to attend to their own devotions, and <i>to be devout</i> in the house of God, that they pay no attention to one another, but Protestants will go to a Catholic church, or one of some other denomination than their own, and behave in a manner that I would never insult the Indians by calling “savage” or “uncivilized.” An Indian will not even set foot on the top of one of the underground kivas where religious ceremonies of one clan are going on to which he does not belong. I do not ignore the fact that this reserve comes from superstitious fear lest some harm befall him, and this fear, perhaps, is not good. But whether from fear or not, the reverence for the sacred place and the ceremonies going on is refreshing and gratifying. Especially so is it to me after seeing, week after week, a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">252</span> crowd of so-called civilized young men (and old) lounging around a church door, sometimes smoking, making comments upon the people entering the church. I have as little toleration for the acts of these young men who thus selfishly rob people of their comfort and destroy their religious feeling as I would have for any one who would laugh at sorrow, or make a mock of the grief of the bereaved. And my feeling extends also to the officials of the church who will permit such outrageous conduct. Churches are for the education of all the people in religious and higher things. How can youth be educated in higher things when the very precincts of the church are allowed to be used by them for acts of discourtesy, rudeness, and selfish <span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">253</span> disregard for the thoughts and rights of others? With the Indians these things never occur. In looking at ceremonies in which they have no part, their manner betokens the profoundest respect and reverence. If not for the worship itself, it is yet shown to the feelings of those who do worship. I have photographs in my collection of Indian youths standing at the door of a Christian church while the priest within intoned the mass, or performed some part of the appointed ritual. The rapt expression of intent earnestness and seriousness is so far removed from the flippant, indifferent, careless expression and attitude of many young men of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">254</span> my own race that I long for the latter to know somewhat of the feeling and reverence of the former.</p> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_252" src="images/i_252.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">THE CHIEF PRIEST OF THE ANTELOPES MARCHING TO THE DANCE PLAZA.</p> </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_253" src="images/i_253.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">THE CIRCUIT OF ANTELOPE PRIESTS BEFORE THE KISI IN THE HOPI SNAKE DANCE.</p> </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_254" src="images/i_254.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">THE ANTELOPE PRIEST PRAYING BEFORE THE<br/> SHRINE OF THE WEAVER OF THE CLOUDS.</p> </div> <p>Then in the religious ceremonies in which they take part, their demeanor is remarkable in its intent seriousness and earnestness. I have seen Indians at their shrines, when they thought they were entirely alone, pray with an agony of seriousness and fervor that I have never seen equalled or at least surpassed. The priests of the Snake Dance and the Lelentu (prayers for rain and that water will flow freely into the springs) are as earnest and sincere and devout as the most consecrated Christian minister or priest I ever saw. And the dancers of the Acomas, Lagunas, Hopis, Navahos, Zunis, etc., enter into these, their religious ceremonies, with an earnestness and reverence that put to shame the flippant, bustling, looking-around, whispering congregations of many of our so-called Christian churches.</p> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_255" src="images/i_255.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">CARRYING THE SNAKES IN THEIR MOUTHS IN THE HOPI SNAKE DANCE.</p> </div> <p>Nor is this all. The Indian’s every-day attitude is one of reverence for the Powers Above. He does everything with these before his mind. The first thing he does on awakening is to propitiate all the powers of the five or seven cardinal points. When the sun <span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">255</span> rises he makes his offering to the powers behind it, that control and direct it, that it may be a blessing throughout the day. Indeed, every act of his life may be said to have a religious thought attached to it, so powerfully is the religious instinct developed within him. If you offer him a cigarette he will propitiate the Powers Above and Around and Below before he gives himself up to the full enjoyment of it. He does this, however, with such apparent unconcern that the stranger would never dream of it, even though he were looking straight at him. But the knowing will understand. When he sees the Indian quietly blow a puff of smoke to the East, he knows that is for the purpose of reminding the good and evil powers that reside there <span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">256</span> that the smoker wishes their good influences to rest upon him, or, at least, that the evil influences shall pass him by. And the same thing when the smoker puffs to the North, the West, the South, and the <i>Here</i>. For the Navaho Indian believes that there are powers that need propitiating just here, while the Hopis add the powers of the Above and the Below, thus making seven cardinal points.</p> <p>The secret prayers and rites of the underground kivas, or the medicine <i>hogans</i> of Hopi and Navaho are marvels of sincerity, earnestness, and reverence. One is impressed whether he understands them or not, and the white man comes away, or at least I do, with this feeling, viz., that I would to God the white race, so long as they worship at all, would do so with such outward decorum, reverence, and earnestness that would imply their real inward belief that the thing is more than a meaningless, perfunctory ceremony that they must go through.</p> <p>Another remarkable thing I would that the white race would learn from the Indian is his habit of teaching the victim of a misfortune of birth that his misfortune is a mark of divine favor. Let me explain fully. A hunchback or a dwarf among the Indians is not made the butt of rude wit, ghastly jokes, or of cruel treatment, as is generally the case with such a one of our own race, but is treated with special consideration and kindness. I knew a Mohave boy who was humpbacked when born. The shaman or medicine man explained how the deformity came. He was a special child, a gift from the gods above. He came from the Above to the Here on the exquisite pathway of a rainbow. But, unfortunately, the rainbow rested over a very sharp, rugged mountain peak, which the gods <span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">257</span> did not see, and, as the child slid down to the earth, his poor, little, naked back caught on the sharp peak and was thus deformed. With such a story of his origin his parents were made happy, and as he grew older, he was treated with kindness and consideration by his boy companions. Now, while I would not gain this end by the superstitious story of the Mohave medicine man, I would that we could in some way teach our boys to look with compassion upon the misfortune of such as happen to be afflicted at birth, or to be light-witted, or in some way not the equal of the majority.</p> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_257" src="images/i_257.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">DRINKING THE EMETIC AFTER THE HOPI SNAKE DANCE.</p> </div> <p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">258</span></p> <p>If an Indian be afflicted with hysteria, or fits of any kind, he is better treated as the result of his affliction rather than worse. Too often the white race makes these afflictions the cause of brutal and indifferent treatment, and adds sorrow to the already overburdened and distressed souls of the suffering. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">259</span></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />