THE INDIAN AND SELF-RESTRAINT
Few of the superior white race would think of looking to the Indian
for examples of self-restraint, but I can give them here one of the
most marked examples in history. Before the advent of the white man
in America the various aboriginal tribes roamed over the plains, the
mountains, the foothills, and in the forests, and with snare and
trap, gin and bow and arrow caught or slew the game needed for food.
These tribes were often hostile to each other; they trespassed on
each other’s hunting-grounds, and in consequence, often fought in
deadly wars which came nigh to exterminating some of them. They were
not regardful, therefore, one would think, of the rights or needs of
others than themselves to the game they hunted; and it is absurd (so
the school-books would tell us) to assume that they would be provident
or careful to preserve game for the future. Hence they would slay
ruthlessly (the same authorities would doubtless declare), indifferent
as to the days to come and their future needs, merely seeking food for
to-day, and gorging upon it to repletion. In this case, however, the
school-books would be wrong. In the hundreds or thousands of years that
the Indians controlled this great continent they never once “killed
out” any one of their hunting-fields.
When the white race appeared upon the scene, game of every kind,--fish,
flesh, and fowl,--was plentiful. Trappers and hunters went up and down
the rivers, where beaver and otter, musk and mink, lived, and through
the forests where birds nested and deer, antelope, and other game
browsed; climbed the mountains where bear and puma lodged, and ever
their bales of skins, furs, peltries, and hides loaded the canoes and
the decks of returning vessels. Here was the best proof of the Indian’s
self-restraint and provident foresight for the future, in that the
white man found such an abundance of all kinds of game ready to his
hand.
Then came the master mind of an Astor who valued money more than
the future. What did it matter to him that game of a hundred kinds
disappeared from the face of the earth provided he could make a
fortune? What cared he that men and women would starve in the days to
come so long as he could pile up his hoard of pelts, and sell them to
add to his wealth? Modern commercialism, that damned and damning spirit
of our civilization that sees nothing but dollars, that would shut
out the glory of the sun rather than miss the ten-cent piece close at
hand, entered into the game. Then the sportsman and the pot hunter of
the white race came also, and between them and the Buffalo Bills who
shot down buffaloes by the thousand for food to supply the builders
of the transcontinental railways, in half a generation they cleared
the prairies of the millions of noble buffaloes which used to roam in
vast herds, left nothing but slender bands or solitary animals of the
moose and elk, and drove these into almost inaccessible solitudes for
self-preservation, and nearly stripped the country of deer, antelope,
wild turkeys, and sage hens. Then they passed laws to protect “game,”
making a close season so that the Indians, who, in their days of
freedom and wildness, needed no law but their own good sense and
self-restraint, cannot now shoot at all save in the few days when the
restrictions are removed. So that, practically speaking, the Indian
now has no hunting-ground; he is debarred from obtaining wild game for
food for himself and family, and all because of the infernal greed and
equally infernal brutality of the pot-hunter. Here, then, is a national
proof--for what I have said is practically true of every state in
the country--that the white race has much to learn of self-restraint
from the despised Indian. Self-restraint as to greed,--for, until the
advent of the white, one Indian never sought to build up mere wealth
at the expense of or to the injury or detriment of his fellows. This
was the white man’s way, not his! He practised self-restraint, for the
Indians knew and realized that if the animals were killed too closely
the species would soon become extinct, and future generations, if not
themselves, have to suffer.
To most people the Indian is a careless creature, content if his belly
is filled to-day, improvident for the future, and therefore unwise,
unthoughtful, and to be condemned. May it not be in this apparent
carelessness for the future the Indian is wiser than we, that he is
deliberately exercising a beneficial restraint? Think of the wild
hurly-burly of our struggle to accumulate, and then consider the
expense, the worry, the endless care of protecting that which we have
accumulated. One far wiser than the sages of to-day once declared that
we were to “take no thought for the morrow,” and in His whole teaching
and life reprobated the struggle for wealth, and the life of selfish
ease that comes with its attainment.
One of the greatest curses of our present age and civilization is
love of ease, craving for luxury, desire to “have a good time.”
We worship money because it brings these things, forgetful of the
teachings of history that luxury and ease beget sensuality and vice,
and these in turn beget disease, decay, and death. I am opposed to
great money-getting on this account, and would not amass a fortune if I
could. As for leaving large sums of money to my children, especially my
sons, nothing could ever induce me to do it. If much money should ever
come to me I hereby serve notice upon all concerned that I shall spend
it, wisely and usefully, as my best judgment dictates, as soon as I
can, and anyhow get rid of it so that no son of mine shall say that the
money I left him helped him on the downward path.
The Indian knows well the lesson that physical health comes only by
the exercise of the body, therefore he definitely refuses any course
of life that would prevent it; he welcomes for himself, his wife, his
sons, and his daughters physical work; he also knows that mental and
spiritual improvement come only by the exercise of mental and spiritual
faculties, and he shuns everything that stultifies them. Did he know
English, he could sing with Thomas Gray:
“From toil he wins his spirits light,
From busy day the peaceful night:
Rich, from the very want of wealth,
In heaven’s best treasures, peace and health.”
And he puts into practical life what another of our sages well
expressed when he said: “Occupation and exercise are the hand-maidens
of purity and strength.” Too often we merely read these wise words. The
Indian lives them. In this the white race can well imitate him. He
faces hardship and danger with eagerness that thereby he may develop
courage and strength. He takes his sons and punishes them in what we
should call a cruel manner to develop fortitude; he sends them out
into the desert, mountain, and forest solitudes that there they may
meet and talk with Those Above. Every youth or young man who hopes to
be a “medicine man” goes out to some such solitary place. He takes no
food, no nourishment of any kind, and fasts several days and nights.
He drinks nothing but a little water. He sleeps as little as possible.
Then if spirits come to him he must obey the teachings and requirements
of each one. These teachings and requirements demand the suppression
of the natural instincts and desires, and the exercise of positive
restraints to an extent that the greatest religious devotee of the
white race would scarcely be willing to submit to. One spirit demands
that water be drank but once a day, no matter how hot the weather;
another that no food shall be taken on three days out of each week;
another that no hide shall be made into moccasins, and so on. This,
therefore, means a life of self-denial and restraint that surpasses
anything known in civilization. Our Catholic priests take a vow of
perpetual chastity and obedience, the members of the religious orders
go further and pledge themselves to perpetual poverty, but these Indian
medicine men, who accept the aid of many spirits,--ten, twenty, and
even thirty,--are limited and restricted in their lives to a degree
that is as astonishing as it is, to the majority of the white race,
unknown.
Now, while the specific acts of restraint of the Indian may not
appeal to me, _the spirit of them_ is much needed by our whole race.
Self-restraint, self-denial, self-control, are the bulwarks of
spiritual power. He only is strong in spirit who can control himself,
hence I would that the white race would learn these lessons from the
Indian.
Browning thoroughly believed in this spirit of self-restraint,
self-sacrifice, self-control. In his Rabbi Ben Ezra he preaches some
strong doctrines. Nothing is more needed to-day than the following
robust and forceful words put into practical every-day living:
“Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids, not sit, nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three parts pain,
Strive and hold cheap the strain,
Learn, never mind the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”