THE INDIAN AND THE SEX QUESTION
Having studied medicine somewhat in my life, I have been permitted as
a “medicine man” to know more of the intimate life of the Indian women
than many white men. In this article I propose to give the results of
many observations in this field, with full assurance that there are
many things the white woman may learn from the Indian, both in her
treatment of herself and her children.
In the first place, the period of adolescence in both boys and girls is
regarded with the importance it deserves.
The white race has much to learn from the Indian in its treatment of
boys and girls at this age. My blood is made to boil almost every
day when I am in our cities and see young girls, just entering into
maidenhood, coming home from school, anæmic, pale, nervous, irritable,
almost victims of St. Vitus’s dance, often dyspeptic or with a cough
fastening its hold upon them, because their parents are so blind and
foolish as to prefer book and school education to health. To me such
parents are guilty of cruelty and criminality, and I would sooner
imprison them and take away the control of their children from them
than I would the forger or the housebreaker. They are cruel in that
they are either ignorantly or wilfully ruining the health,--perhaps for
life,--of their children, and they are criminal in that by so doing
they are injuring the future welfare of the state. Boys, too, are
treated exactly the same at this time as at any other, and when the
great mystery of sex awakening is upon them, they are sent to school
as usual, treated with the same untrue answers to the questions that
arise that they were given to quiet their minds when they were little
more than babies. I am thankful there has been much of an awakening in
this matter during the past twenty years, and that I have had an active
part in it. I think it was in 1888 that I published a small book on sex
teaching for the young.[4] It is as imperative to warn the young to-day
as it was then. The Indian boy is instructed fully into the mystery of
sex just as soon and as simply as he is in every other question that
arises, and at puberty he is made the subject of specific ceremonies
that teach him the meaning of the change that is coming over him. He is
treated with a new dignity, is formally recognized as having entered
man’s estate, and is sent out into the woods or the solitude of the
desert “to come to himself.”
[4] “The Guiding Light,” in two parts, to be had only from the author,
1098 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, Cal. In paper, 50 cents; in cloth,
$1.00 postpaid.
In the case of girls, ceremonies of instruction, purification, and
dedication are almost universally observed. The adolescent is set
apart from her fellows, and the elder women give her definite and full
instruction as to what the change that is taking place in her life
means. She is shown the importance of the new function, and how much
the welfare of the race depends upon it. Then she is made to undergo
ceremonies that last for several days, in which her body and all its
functions are dedicated to the tribe. She is one of the future mothers
now, and, as such, is entitled to all respect and consideration. There
is no foolish reserve, no “modesty,” so-called, which arrogates to
itself the right to criticise the wisdom of God in creating human
beings male and female that they may marry and propagate their kind
upon the earth. For, wherever one finds the sort of “modesty” that is
ashamed of natural and God-given functions, there is either a mental
perversion for which the victim is to be pitied, or a moral perversion
which is to be reprobated. Every Indian girl is given fully to
understand what the function means, with all its possibilities, and she
is taught to pray that, when the time comes, she may have a lover, and
that he may be a good husband, and that, in due time, she may be the
happy and healthy mother of many happy and healthy children.
And in some tribes there are certain shrines where the girls are taught
to go and offer their prayers that lovers, husbands, and children--not
one or two of the latter, but many--may be given to them at the will of
the gods above.
This is to dignify sex, to train the girls that wifehood and motherhood
are holy and to be desired, and that they are not matters merely
to jest and joke about, or to talk in secret whispers about one to
another, as if the very subject were unholy and unclean.
Then a matter of practical healthfulness is observed that white parents
need very much to learn, it appears to me, especially in this age of
scholastic crowding and mental overworking. Each month the girl is
required to rest, in order that she may preserve and maintain her body
in perfectly healthy condition. She may go where she will, but she must
be quiet and still, in order that the function may be not disturbed,
and that its regularity may be established. Not only this, but this
habit of rest is kept up so long as the function continues through
life. Even on the march a woman may stay behind (if she so desires) and
rest for a day or so. The result of this rest at such times is shown in
the strength and vigor the women show during pregnancy and at birth.
They seem to store up strength, and, as I shall later show, childbirth
to most of them is no more a time of peril, pain, or distress than is
breathing.
[Illustration: A HAVASUPAI MOTHER, PROUD OF HER MAN-CHILD.]
Mothers who neglect to thus instruct and care for their daughters at
the adolescent period are criminals both to their children and to the
race. Among the ancient Greeks such a mother would have been regarded
as a monstrosity; yet many mothers have confessed to their physicians
they have never had one word of converse with their daughters upon
this most important subject. When I see children going to school at
this adolescent period, and being forced by our competitive system
of education to strain every nerve to cram the required amount of
facts into their brains, I do not wonder that we have so many sickly
women who are incapable of being the mothers of healthy and happy
children. Far better that our children be not educated in chemistry,
and literature, in physical science and art, than that they unfit
themselves for the happy relations of a beautiful marriage and sweet
and tender parenthood. For let the new or the old woman say what she
will, the divinely ordered plan is that women shall be wives, and happy
wives at that, capable of making their husbands happy, or at least of
contributing their share to that end, and also that they shall know
the joys of maternity. Unhappy indeed is that woman whose physical
condition is such that she refuses to know the sweet touch of her own
baby’s body, and denies herself the blessed privilege of training its
soul for a beautiful and useful life.
The Indian mother sees to it that her daughter is early taught her
future possibilities and the will of Those Above in regard to her, and
the growing woman would as soon shirk the responsibilities of her sex
as she would refuse to eat. The consequences are that normal births
with Indian women are practically painless and entirely free from
danger. I have known a woman to deliver herself of her child, sever the
umbilicus, and then walk half a mile to the creek, walk into it with
the baby, and give herself and the child a good washing, then return to
her camp, suckle the little one, and proceed to attend to her duties as
if nothing had happened. At another time I saw a woman, less than half
an hour after her child was born, start off for a heavy load of wood.
Their freedom from constricting waist-bands, their absolute freedom of
body, their nasal and deep breathing, their muscular exercise through
life, their open air sleeping and living,--all have much to do with
these easy births.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR DESCRIBING THE SYMBOLISM OF THE PAIUTI BASKET
DESIGN.]
To a good Indian woman, also, there is nothing more evil than to
circumvent the will of Those Above by refusing to have children. Such a
woman would be almost a monstrosity to an Indian, who would be unable
to comprehend the mental workings of such an abnormality. Children are
to be desired, to be longed for, and to become a joyous possession. In
the making of some of their basketry the Paiuti women weave a design
which shows the opening between the upper and lower worlds through
which the souls of all children born into this upper world must come.
By a correspondence of the symbol with the thing symbolized, the
Paiuti weaver believes that if she closes up this opening in the
basket, she will render herself incapable of bearing any more children.
Therefore, even though you were to offer her her weight in money, you
could not persuade her to close up the aperture in the basket’s design.
This would be circumventing the will of the gods.
The same law, too, applies to the suckling of her child. The Indian
mother never dreams of foregoing this healthful duty and pleasure. She
regards it as one of her special joys, in which she is superior to man.
And just as the Paiuti weaver refuses to close the aperture in her
basket, so does the Zuni woman refuse to close, except with averted
eyes and a prayer that the gods will see she did it with unseeing eyes,
the tiny aperture in the mammæ of the water bottles which she makes
of clay in imitation of the human breasts. She dare not, even thus in
symbol, suggest the closing of her own maternal founts.
Ah! beautiful simplicity and joy of naturalness. The God of men and
women surely knew what was good for them when He set in motion the
forces that created them. In harmony with His will and purpose we are
healthy, happy, normal beings, living lives of purity, progress, and
peace. In opposition to His will we are unhealthy, unhappy, abnormal
beings, full of wretchedness, impurity, and misery. In many things
the Indian, too simple to go far away from the Divine precepts which
come to him through contact with nature, is wiser than we. Let us then
put on the garment of simplicity, seek to know the will of God, and
with hearts like little children learn the true way, and then seek for
courage to walk therein.
[Illustration: A HEALTHY AND HAPPY PIMA MOTHER WHOSE BABY WAS GLADLY
WELCOMED.]