THE INDIAN AND PHYSICAL LABOR
Ministers and orators, teachers and statesmen, members of the W. C.
T. U., as well as the Y. M. C. A., of the white race, all profess to
believe that the white race believes in the dignity of physical labor.
That profession is often a lie.
We no more believe in the dignity of physical labor than we do in the
refinement of a hog. Our actions give the direct lie to our words.
I am writing with the utmost calmness, and say these strong words
with deliberate intent. As a nation we are humbugs when we pretend to
believe in the dignity of labor. Perhaps, after all, we do believe
in it, but in most cases it is not for ourselves, but for “the other
fellow.”
On the other hand, the Indian really and truly believes in the dignity
of physical labor. A chief would just as soon be “caught” dressing
buckskin, or sewing a pair of moccasins, or irrigating his corn-field
as lolling on a Navaho blanket “smoking the pipe of peace.” With the
white race this is not so. Men believe in the dignity of labor as much
as they do in the brotherhood of man. They would no more be seen doing
physical labor--wheeling a wheelbarrow, for instance, digging a ditch,
building a wall, plowing a potato patch, or doing any other physical
work, save the few things men are allowed to do without being thought
peculiar, as, for instance, taking care of a small home garden, taking
the ashes out of the furnace, and things of that kind--than they would
be seen picking their neighbors’ pockets or burglarizing their houses.
When they want to gain exercise they go to some indoor gymnasium, where
the air is the breathed-over, dead air of a hundred people, and they
swing dumb-bells, pull on weights, struggle frantically on bars, and
do other similar and fool-like things, because, forsooth, these things
are gentlemanly; or they go out and swing golf-clubs and pursue a poor
innocent little ball over the “links,” while gaping caddies look on at
their wild strokes, and listen to the insane profanity with which they
try to compel themselves to believe that they are “gentlemen, bah Jove!”
[Illustration: A HAVASUPAI GIRL, WEAVER OF BASKETS.]
Of all the contemptible, shuffling, and mean subterfuges the white
race is capable of, this seems to me to be about the meanest and most
contemptible. To pretend to believe in the dignity of labor, and then
at any and all opportunities afforded to labor to dodge away and do
these useless and selfish things that do not take off one ounce of the
burden of physical labor we have imposed upon our fellows.
Let me not be thought for a moment to be opposed to any healthful
recreation or sport. If golf be pursued as a recreation, for fun, I am
heartily in accord with it and its promoters. It is when it is taken as
an “exercise,” as a _substitute for honest and useful labor_, that I
protest against it, as a fraud, a delusion, a snare, and a contemptible
subterfuge. If you want real exercise, real work, go and relieve some
poor fellow-man of his excess of hard work. Tell him you have come
to give him an hour’s rest, that he may go and study nature, go and
look at the flowers of your garden, wander into the woods and hear the
birds sing, or visit the public library and read some entertaining and
instructive book. If you are too ashamed to openly try to give an hour
or two of rest and change to your “brother” man, go and chop the wood
for the house, dig up the potato patch, wheel out the manure from the
stable, or do some other _useful_ and beneficial thing. Pleasure is
pleasure, sport is sport, fun is fun, but to engage in these sports
seriously, as a physical exercise to counteract the effects of your
evil dietetic habits or other grossnesses, is to add hypocrisy and
subterfuge to evil living.
[Illustration: HOPI INDIAN WEAVING A DRESS FOR HIS WIFE.]
What labor the Indian has to do he does gladly, cheerfully, openly. He
is not ashamed to have soiled hands or to be caught in the act. In this
I am heartily in accord with him. If I ever wrote a creed one of the
first articles of my religion would be: “I believe in the benefit and
joy of physical labor.” If I had my way I would compel every member
of the so-called “learned” professions (!), from preacher to lawyer,
teacher and doctor, statesman, politician, and bartender, to spend not
less than three hours at hard physical labor _every day_, and as for my
brother preachers, I would put them to road-making every Monday, for
half the day at least, so that by practical knowledge of road-making on
earth they might be better able to preach to their congregations the
following Sunday about the road to heaven. There is nothing that more
reveals that we are a people of _caste_ and class than the attitude of
the rich and the “learned” toward physical labor. I am not in sympathy
with that attitude in any respect; I despise, hate, loathe it, and
would see it changed. To the Indian, for his honest respect for and
indulgence in physical labor, I give my adherence and honor.
[Illustration: VARIOUS ARTICLES OF USE AND ORNAMENT MADE AND DECORATED
BY INDIANS.]