THE INDIAN AND THE SANCTITY OF NUDITY
While adults of both sexes among all Indians wear either a skirt or
a gee-string, there is not the slightest hesitancy in allowing the
young, both boys and girls, to run about in a state of nudity. Since
we have sent white teachers and missionaries to the Indians, they are
beginning to learn that somehow--though they can’t sort it out just
how or why--there is something indecent in allowing nude children to
wander about their homes and villages. They are being taught to be
“ashamed,”--their children are becoming sex-conscious as are our white
children, long before their time, and we are foisting on to them our
hateful, impure, and blasphemous conceptions of nudity. For myself I am
free to confess that I have no sympathy with this kind of teaching. I
think it unnecessary, and not only unnecessary but a positive injury.
I believe in the sanctity of nudity, especially in that of young
children, and while with our present social customs we cannot allow our
children to be nude or partially nude in public, I would that our minds
were as clean in this matter as are those of the Indians with whom I
have so long been acquainted.
Whatever society may demand of us in public, there is no reason why,
in private, both our children and ourselves should not spend a certain
portion of every day, if possible, in contact with the direct rays of
the sun and the air. Every school in the land should be so equipped,
and our children and their parents be so trained, that, under proper
direction, a certain part of every day the students could be so
exposed. All know the benefit that comes from the exposing of the arms
and legs to the sun and breezes at the sea-shore. Men, women, and
children alike who flee the city for an annual holiday to the seaside
return to their shut-in, civilized (!) life with renewed vigor and
health. Why not give some of this life to city children every day
in the year? Even in Eastern cities, in winter, a solarium could be
created in the top stories of the schoolhouses, and there, with every
window wide open, the children clothed in the scantiest of garments,
as at the seaside, could go through physical and breathing exercises,
and romp or play games for half an hour, to their great benefit both of
body and mind.
We have for so long trained ourselves to the half expressed belief
that there is something wrong about nudity that we find women’s clubs
draping statues, and organizations rejecting figures because they are
nude, which all ages and all civilized peoples have accepted as pure
and chaste works of art. I would not for a moment have it thought
that I approve of all nude statues or pictures. Many of them have
no virtue to commend them. Yet I would not indiscriminately condemn
all works of art in the nude merely because they are nude. We have
forgotten the appearance of a healthy body, and feel ashamed to see
one. By our mental attitude we accuse the Creator of indecency that
“male and female created He them,” for, not only do we veil the bodies
of the opposite sexes from each other, (which is a perfectly correct
and wise thing to do) but daughters are ashamed to be seen nude by
their own mothers, and mothers by their daughters. I believe in the
sanctity of nudity. Let the sexes remain apart, by all means, but let
there be less of false shame when men see nude men, or women see nude
women, or either or both see nude children. It is a fact declared by
the most conservative of white explorers, that the naked tribes of
aborigines are the most pure, chaste, and truly modest. Our conception
that because Indians are unclothed they are therefore indecent and
unclean, impure and unchaste, is a dirty conception, dishonoring to
ourselves and our Creator. _Honi soit qui mal y pense_, and “to the
pure all things are pure” are as true to-day as when they were first
spoken and written, and while I am as opposed as is any one living to
nude pictures and statues that have nothing to commend them but their
nudity; while I am strongly opposed to promiscuous nudity either in
whole or in part, I am equally opposed to the mental attitude that
nudity in itself is wrong, and that the Creator did not know His
business when he created us both nude and of different sexes.
[Illustration: A HAVASUPAI CHILD BROUGHT UP TO ENJOY BEING OUT IN THE
RAIN.]
Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, and many others of the great men
of the world, made it a daily practice to expose their bodies to the
sun and the air. For years I have seized every proper opportunity
to do so, such as when I took my fifteen days’ rowing trip down the
Colorado River. When on the Salton Sea exploring trip; when out in the
deserts, the canyons, the forests, on the mountain tops, I endeavored
every day to give my body some exposure, and every night and morning,
when camping out, before retiring and arising, I have a brief air bath,
sometimes with vigorous physical exercises. Thus the power of God’s own
sun and air enter my body through every pore of the skin, and I enjoy a
health, vigor, vim, and tingle of delight I can get in no other way.
When I first visited the Havasupai Indians, all the men were nude, part
of the time, save for the breech-clout. In their dances, in some of
which I participated, it was a delight to see the movements of their
perfect muscles, their bronze flesh glistening in the sun, or in the
glow of the camp fires. And men, women, and children all bathed at the
same time, in the clear waters of Havasu Creek, all the adults, of
course, wearing either a short skirt or a breech clout, but the major
part of the body fully exposed. There was no immodesty and no thought
of anything of the kind. Nudity or semi-nudity was taken as a matter of
course, and neither by word or deed did anyone seem conscious of it.
After vigorous swimming, the young men wrestled, the youngsters ran
races, the men indulged in various games, their bodies still exposed
to the sun and the air, and no one could fail to observe the health,
vigor, and robustness that came from this habit of life.
The Hopis train their boys and young men to their morning runs over the
desert in a state of almost complete nudity, and in their snake dance
races, nothing but the gee-string is worn, and people of both sexes
gaze upon them with no thought of immodesty. Modesty is a condition of
soul, and has nothing to do with the exposure or covering of the body.
One may be a Godiva and be far more modest than another who veils not
only her whole body but even her face. And for myself, I wish to record
my conviction that it would be far better for the morals of civilized
man if he would bring up his children of both sexes to recognize and
know the sanctity of nudity, rather than to cover the body as he does
and to affirm by his words and suggest by his demeanor that he regards
an exposed body as indecent. A small trunk can always be worn and this
suffices for every purpose of true modesty.
[Illustration: A NUDE HOPI SPINNING WOOL FOR THE MAKING OF A DRESS FOR
HIS WIFE.]
In many of the leading sanitariums of the world the patients are
required to expose their bodies to the sun and air for a certain length
of time daily. Here is a struggling to get back to a natural condition,
an almost essential condition to the attainment and retention of
perfect health. Of the outdoor gymnasiums for men and women at the
Boulder Sanitarium, Colorado, Dr. Howard F. Rand thus writes:
“Here the men patients, clothed with simple trunks, bask in the
sunshine on the sand which covers the ground, follow the trainer
through the different lines of gymnastic work, finally plunging into
the pool and coming out ready to be dried and thoroughly rubbed.
Donning their simple apparel, they can, if they choose, proceed up the
mountain, and gather beautiful wild flowers and rest the eye on the
surrounding scenery.
“The outdoor gymnasium is especially helpful in the treatment of
women. It is very difficult to get them to dress properly when taking
physical exercise, and they are ‘so afraid’ of exposing themselves
to the sunlight and ‘ruining’ their complexion. But the beautiful
physique of some of our young women who have trained in this line,
and the assurance that they can so develop themselves, lead them to
make short trips to the gymnasium, and gradually they grow willing
to be delivered from close wrappings, and expose themselves to the
sunlight. The pleasure is enticing; enjoyment of exercise in this
place without the restriction of tight clothing rapidly increases, and
desired results are obtained by this means in less time than in any
other line of training. The great essential is to have the person in
natural condition when exercising, so that all the organs of the body
may move freely and naturally, without let or hindrance. Number seems
to increase the enchantment; hence the more readily do the timid and
backward take the first steps.
“At first it is impossible for many to expand at the waist line; but
a jump into the pool, the temperature of the water being 70° to 75°,
causes them involuntarily to inflate the respiratory organs, and
through this and special training deep breathing becomes habitual in
less time than it would in any other way.
“We aim to have our patients spend at least one hour, twice a day
(forenoon and afternoon), in the open-air gymnasium.
“Soon after beginning this course, the patient’s skin, and mind as
well, will be found clearing up. He will say his appetite is better,
and that he sleeps more soundly, and is gaining weight and strength.
The surface becomes brown in a short time, but as soon as pigmentation
ceases, there is a natural, pearly-white hue--a sure indicator of
health.”
These open-air gymnasiums are to be found at the leading sanitariums of
the world, thus clearly showing that the Indian idea of nudity has the
sanction of the highest and wisest medical opinions of the white race.
The body is a sweet, a precious, a beautiful expression of God’s
thought; it was and is intended by the Divine as the house of the mind,
the soul, the immortal part of the human being. Paul expressly declares
it is “the temple of the Holy Ghost.” Every part of it is beautiful,
every part God-given. In health it is the most perfect machine ever
designed, and the most beautiful. Every function it performs is a
marvel, every power contained within it a miracle. How obviously
wrong then is anything that disparages, lowers, offends the high and
supreme dignity of this glorious structure. Yet we are ashamed of it,
we apologize for it, we teach our children to be ashamed of it and to
cover it as an evil thing.