THE INDIAN AND REPINING
In all my association with Indians, I cannot recall a single instance
of repining, regret over the unalterable events of the past, weeping or
wailing over joys lost, demoralizing self-pity, or magnified distress
because “we have seen better days.” The simple, unpretentious, really
democratic life of the Indian disposes of these latter ills to which
the white race is heir by rendering them impossible, and repining and
self-pity seem to have no place in their vocabulary. They weep and
wail when their loved ones die; and they gather together and pray
if drought or other natural evils destroy their crops, but when the
weeping is done it is done, and life’s duties are taken up without
constant repining or self-pity. What has happened has happened. Nothing
can alter it. It is the will of Those Above, or whether it is or not
it _IS_, and that is enough. Hence why complain, why protest. Accept
the inevitable. Leave it alone. Let the dead past bury its dead. Do the
work of to-day; never mind the woe of yesterday.
This seems to me to be the Indian attitude. A kind of proud
acquiescence, a manly, womanly recognition of facts, and a willingness
to face them and thus triumph over them. Instead of magnifying their
sorrows they minimize them by constant labor and by doing the very
opposite, viz., magnifying their joys. Often have I heard this done.
A widow speaking of her lost husband, and immediately referring in
tones of joy to her boys and girls, her fine corn-field, her peach
orchard,--her blessings, in fact.
It is simply impossible for any one to estimate the amount of time,
strength, energy, and life that have been wasted by the white race
in lamenting, repining, weeping, over things that could neither be
helped nor changed. And how absurd such lamentation is. If an evil
can be remedied, remedy it. If a wrong can be righted, right it. But
to waste valuable time, strength, and energy in vain repining and
self-pity is a crime that no Indian is so foolish as to commit. It is
left to the white race to thus show its superiority! This comes from
two or three causes. First: Our race, mainly our women, are not as
healthy physically as the Indian, and where physical health is lacking
it is so easy to yield to the force of evil circumstance. Strong men
or women can force themselves into physical and mental activity and
these bring solace and forgetfulness of the pains, ills, and sorrows
of the past. Second: The very ease and luxury of our lives which all
white people so much covet, give us time and opportunity to sit down
and study over sources of sadness, while on the other hand, the Indian
woman has her daily work that she must perform, willy nilly, and thus
is kept from the contemplation of her sorrows. Third: There is in the
Indian that calm serenity of mind and soul that belong only to either
very childlike or exceedingly cultured natures. With the Indian it is
childlike acceptance of the will of the gods; with Browning, it was the
calm philosophy of the highest culture. Unfortunately for most of us,
we have lost the religious simplicity of our ancestors, our childlike
faith and trust, and have not yet attained to the serenity of the
philosopher.
I write this brief chapter merely to call attention to the facts, and
to urge upon the white race the necessity, if it would preserve its
serenity, of either reverting to the simple faith of the Indian, or of
cultivating a religious philosophy that will produce an equal serenity
and equanimity in the face of trial, sorrow, misfortune or death.