<h2 id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI<br/> <span class="medium">THE INDIAN AND IMMORTALITY</span></h2>
<p class="drop"><span class="upper">To</span> the materialist immortality is a foolish dream, to
the agnostic an unjustified human craving, to the
simple Christian a belief, and to the transcendentalist
a confident hope, but to the Indian it is as positive an
assurance as is life. The white race has complicated
its belief in the future life with many theological dogmas.
The Roman Catholic church has its purgatory,
as well as its paradise and hell; the first as a place of
purging for the sins committed in the body and that
must be burned away, the second the abode of the
blest, and the third the place into which the damned
are cast. The Seventh Day Adventists believe that only
those who are saved by “the blood of Christ” and
obedience to his commands are blessed with the gift
of immortal life. They contend it is a free gift as an
act of God’s grace and is not inherent in the soul or
spirit of mankind. Those who refuse to accept
salvation by the vicarious atonement of Christ, they
believe, will be annihilated. The Presbyterian believes
that a certain number of mankind are foreordained for
salvation and heaven, and another number for damnation
and hell, from the foundation of the world. The
Universalist believes that all men will ultimately be
saved and therefore enjoy heaven, whilst others have
a belief in a “conditional” immortality.</p>
<p>The Indian believes in immortality without any
admixture of complex theological ideas. His is a
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">260</span>
simple faith which he accepts as he accepts life. He
believes that when he dies his spirit goes to its new
life just as at birth he came into this life. And he
believes that all the objects he used on earth—food,
clothing, articles of adornment, baskets, horses, saddles,
blankets—have a spirit-life as well as he has. Hence,
when one dies, his friends throw upon his funeral
pyre his clothing, blankets, and other personal belongings,
utensils for his comfort, food for his nourishment
on the way to the “under world,” or land of the future,
and strangle his horse that its spirit may aid him on
his journey. When death approaches he faces it with
calmness, equanimity and serenity. Fearless and unafraid
he awaits the coming of the last great enemy.
In effect, he cries out with Browning:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“I would hate that death bandaged my eyes,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">And forbore, and bade me creep past.<br/></span>
<span class="i0">No! let me taste the whole of it; fare like my peers,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">The heroes of old.”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p>No shirking for him; as calmly as Socrates took the
bowl of fatal hemlock, the Indian awaits death and
proudly passes on to the new life. Those who are
left behind may wail for their loss, but the one who
departs asks for and receives no sympathy.</p>
<p>Now, it is this simple acceptation of death as a
natural thing that I would have the white race learn.
And yet it can never come to us as an act of simple
faith as it is with the Indian. Our civilization has
spoiled us for “simple faith.” That is practically
impossible, save to a few souls who, unlike the rest of
us, have “kept themselves unspotted from the world”
of speculative thought, or theological dogma. It
can come (and does with many) as the result of religious
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">261</span>
training, or as it did to Browning and Whitman.
What wonderfully different minds these two men had.
One an aristocrat, the other a democrat, yet both
full of love for mankind, and each teaching with vigor
and power the Fatherhood of God, the real brotherhood
of man, and the immortality of the soul. Read
Browning’s <i>Prospice</i>, part of which I have already
quoted, <i>Evelyn Hope</i>, <i>Abt Vogler</i>, and these three
stanzas with which he opens his <i>La Saziaz</i>, and elsewhere
calls a <i>Pisgah Sight</i>:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Good, to forgive:<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Best, to forget!<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Living we fret;<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Dying, we live.<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Fretless and free,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Soul, clap thy pinion!<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Earth have dominion,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Body, o’er thee!<br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Wander at will,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Day after day,—<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Wander away,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Wandering still—<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Soul that canst soar!<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Body may slumber:<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Body shall cumber<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Soul-flight no more.<br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Waft of soul’s wing!<br/></span>
<span class="i2">What lies above?<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Sunshine and Love,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Sky blue and Spring!<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Body hides—where?<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Ferns of all feather,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Mosses and heather,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Yours be the care!”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">262</span></p>
<p>Compare these utterances with Whitman’s rugged
and forceful words:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Passive and faltering,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">The words, <i>the Dead</i>, I write,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">For living are the Dead,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">(Haply the only living, only real,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">And I, the apparition, the spectre.)”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p>Again, in his <i>To One Shortly to Die</i>, what a triumphant
note is in the last two lines:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p>How perfectly Indian, this attitude, this refusal
to be sorry, and to offer congratulations rather than
regrets. In his <i>Night on the Prairies</i> his perfect
assurance as to the future is clearly expressed, and
while measuring himself with the great thoughts of
space and eternity that fill him as he gazes upon the
myriads of globes above, he exclaims:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Now I absorb immortality and peace, I admire death....<br/></span>
<span class="i0">O, I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p>In one poem he speaks of “awaiting death with
perfect equanimity,” and in another says:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide at last of all,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Rich, florid loosener of the stricture knot call’d life,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p>And the reason for all this restfulness as to Death
and the Future is expressed in his Assurances:</p>
<p class="hang">“I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young
men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the
deaths of little children are provided for. (Did you think life was
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">263</span>
so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all life, is not well
provided for?)</p>
<p class="hang">I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors
of them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has
gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points.</p>
<p class="hang">I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere,
at any time, is provided for in the inherences of things.</p>
<p class="hang">I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space,
but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.”</p>
<p>So, reader, I care not how it comes into your soul,
so that you have it there, a rich and precious possession,
this living, active, potential belief in immortality.
If you know <i>you are</i> now, and that you will never end,
you will find that life itself becomes more enlarged
and dignified. You will not be content with mere
earthly aims, you will not rest satisfied to be a mere
money-getter, but, realizing the immensity of your
own capacities and powers, you will reach out for the
eternal things, the realities that abide forever. For
Joaquin Miller never wrote a truer word than when
he said:</p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“For all you can hold in your dead cold hand,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Is what you have given away.”<br/></span></div>
</div></div>
<p>This forever settles a thoughtful man’s conception
of mere acquisitiveness. Such gatherings-together are
unworthy the soul that feels and knows its own immortality.
It needs a larger aim, a more worthy object.</p>
<p>Another thing in connection with what we call
death, the white race may well learn from the Indian.
How often does press and pulpit expend itself in finding
superlatives to pour out in lavish eulogy over the
dead, who, while alive, never did a thing to win the
love of their fellows. Such eulogy is unknown among
the Indians. The “preacher of an Indian funeral
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">264</span>
sermon” would no more dare wrongfully praise or
laud his subject than he would falsely execrate him.
He must speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, and while he is not called upon to expatiate
upon the wrong-doings, the foibles or weaknesses
of his subject, he must say no word of praise that is
not justly earned and strictly true.</p>
<p>If this law were applied to the white race, what
different funeral sermons and orations we should
hear and read; and what different inscriptions we
should read upon the tombstones found in our grave-yards.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">265</span></p>
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