THE LITERATURE on the subject of Indians is so extensive and ubiquitous
that, unless a student of Americana is pursuing it, he may find it more
troublesome to avoid than to get hold of. The average old-timer has
for generations regarded Indian scares and fights as the most important
theme for reminiscences. County-minded historians have taken the same
point of view. The Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian
Institution has buried records of Indian beliefs, ceremonies, mythology,
and other folklore in hundreds of tomes; laborious, literal-minded
scholars of other institutions have been as assiduous. In all this lore
and tabulation of facts, the Indian folk themselves have generally been
dried out.
The Anglo-American's policy toward the Indian was to kill him and take
his land, perhaps make a razor-strop out of his hide. The Spaniard's
policy was to baptize him, take his land, enslave him, and appropriate
his women. Any English-speaking frontiersman who took up with the
Indians was dubbed "squaw man"--a term of sinister connotations. Despite
pride in descending from Pocahontas and in the vaunted Indian blood of
such individuals as Will Rogers, crossbreeding between Anglo-Americans
and Indians has been restricted, as compared, for instance, with the
interdicted crosses between white men and black women. The Spaniards,
on the other hand, crossed in battalions with the Indians, generating
_mestizo_ (mixed-blooded) nations, of which Mexico is the chief example.
As a result, the English-speaking occupiers of the land have in general
absorbed directly only a minimum of Indian culture--nothing at all
comparable to the Uncle Remus stories and characters and the spiritual
songs and the blues music from the Negroes. Grandpa still tells how his
own grandpa saved or lost his scalp during a Comanche horse-stealing
raid in the light of the moon; Boy Scouts hunt for Indian arrowheads;
every section of the country has a bluff called Lovers' Leap, where,
according to legend, a pair of forlorn Indian lovers, or perhaps only
one of the pair, dived to death; the maps all show Caddo Lake, Kiowa
Peak, Squaw Creek, Tehuacana Hills, Nacogdoches town, Cherokee County,
Indian Gap, and many another place name derived from Indian days. All
such contacts with Indian life are exterior. Three forms of Indian
culture are, however, weaving into the life patterns of America.
(1) The Mexicans have naturally inherited and assimilated Indian lore
about plants, animals, places, all kinds of human relationships with
the land. Through the Mexican medium, with which he is becoming more
sympathetic, the gringo is getting the ages-old Indian culture.
(2) The Pueblo and Navajo Indians in particular are impressing their
arts, crafts, and ways of life upon special groups of Americans living
near them, and these special groups are transmitting some of their
acquisitions. The special groups incline to be arty and worshipful, but
they express a salutary revolt against machined existence and they have
done much to revive dignity in Indian life. Offsetting dilettantism, the
Museum of New Mexico and associated institutions and artists and other
individuals have fostered Indian pottery, weaving, silversmithing,
dancing, painting, and other arts and crafts. Superior craftsmanship can
now depend upon a fairly reliable market; the taste of American buyers
has been somewhat elevated.
O mountains, pure and holy, give me
a song, a strong and holy song to bless
my flock and bring the rain!
This is from "Navajo Holy Song," as rendered by Edith Hart Mason. It
expresses a spiritual content in Indian life far removed from the We and
God, Incorporated form of religion ordained by the National Association
of Manufacturers.
(3) The wild freedom, mobility, and fierce love of liberty of
the mounted Indians of the Plains will perhaps always stir
imaginations--something like the charging Cossacks, the camping Arabs,
and the migrating Tartars. There is no romance in Indian fights east
of the Mississippi. The mounted Plains Indians always made a big hit in
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Little boys still climb into their seats
and cry out when red horsemen of the Plains ride across the screen.