THE INDIAN AND RELIGIOUS WORSHIP
[Illustration: THE DIGNIFIED AND SOLEMN ROW OF SNAKE PRIESTS IN THE
HOPI SNAKE DANCE CEREMONIES.]
[Illustration: HOPI INDIANS AT THEIR FLUTE CEREMONIES. THIS IS A PRAYER
FOR WATER TO FLOW INTO THEIR DESERT SPRINGS.]
Another thing that the civilized of this age may well learn from
the Indian is intense earnestness and sincerity in all matters of
religion. It is a painful thing for me to go into many of our city
churches. Well-dressed women and girls and young men will sit and
whisper through even the most sacred parts of the service. Indeed, it
is the exception, not the rule, that I ever go to a service without
being outraged by some such exhibition of rudeness, ill manners, and
irreverence. This kind of thing is unknown with the Indian. Religion
is a serious thing. Fun is fun, and when he goes in for fun he does it
with thoroughness and completeness; but when his religious instincts
are called upon, he puts aside all fun, and enters into the spirit of
the occasion with becoming reverence and solemnity. It is civilized
people who go into churches of other faiths than their own and gape
and “gawp” around, whispering the while to one another at the strange
things they see. Protestants are particularly guilty of this serious
vice. Roman Catholics are so trained to attend to their own devotions,
and _to be devout_ in the house of God, that they pay no attention to
one another, but Protestants will go to a Catholic church, or one of
some other denomination than their own, and behave in a manner that I
would never insult the Indians by calling “savage” or “uncivilized.”
An Indian will not even set foot on the top of one of the underground
kivas where religious ceremonies of one clan are going on to which he
does not belong. I do not ignore the fact that this reserve comes from
superstitious fear lest some harm befall him, and this fear, perhaps,
is not good. But whether from fear or not, the reverence for the
sacred place and the ceremonies going on is refreshing and gratifying.
Especially so is it to me after seeing, week after week, a crowd of
so-called civilized young men (and old) lounging around a church door,
sometimes smoking, making comments upon the people entering the church.
I have as little toleration for the acts of these young men who thus
selfishly rob people of their comfort and destroy their religious
feeling as I would have for any one who would laugh at sorrow, or make
a mock of the grief of the bereaved. And my feeling extends also to
the officials of the church who will permit such outrageous conduct.
Churches are for the education of all the people in religious and
higher things. How can youth be educated in higher things when the
very precincts of the church are allowed to be used by them for acts
of discourtesy, rudeness, and selfish disregard for the thoughts and
rights of others? With the Indians these things never occur. In looking
at ceremonies in which they have no part, their manner betokens the
profoundest respect and reverence. If not for the worship itself, it is
yet shown to the feelings of those who do worship. I have photographs
in my collection of Indian youths standing at the door of a Christian
church while the priest within intoned the mass, or performed some part
of the appointed ritual. The rapt expression of intent earnestness and
seriousness is so far removed from the flippant, indifferent, careless
expression and attitude of many young men of my own race that I long
for the latter to know somewhat of the feeling and reverence of the
former.
[Illustration: THE CHIEF PRIEST OF THE ANTELOPES MARCHING TO THE DANCE
PLAZA.]
[Illustration: THE CIRCUIT OF ANTELOPE PRIESTS BEFORE THE KISI IN THE
HOPI SNAKE DANCE.]
Then in the religious ceremonies in which they take part, their
demeanor is remarkable in its intent seriousness and earnestness.
I have seen Indians at their shrines, when they thought they were
entirely alone, pray with an agony of seriousness and fervor that I
have never seen equalled or at least surpassed. The priests of the
Snake Dance and the Lelentu (prayers for rain and that water will flow
freely into the springs) are as earnest and sincere and devout as the
most consecrated Christian minister or priest I ever saw. And the
dancers of the Acomas, Lagunas, Hopis, Navahos, Zunis, etc., enter into
these, their religious ceremonies, with an earnestness and reverence
that put to shame the flippant, bustling, looking-around, whispering
congregations of many of our so-called Christian churches.
[Illustration: THE ANTELOPE PRIEST PRAYING BEFORE THE SHRINE OF THE
WEAVER OF THE CLOUDS.]
[Illustration: CARRYING THE SNAKES IN THEIR MOUTHS IN THE HOPI SNAKE
DANCE.]
Nor is this all. The Indian’s every-day attitude is one of reverence
for the Powers Above. He does everything with these before his mind.
The first thing he does on awakening is to propitiate all the powers
of the five or seven cardinal points. When the sun rises he makes his
offering to the powers behind it, that control and direct it, that it
may be a blessing throughout the day. Indeed, every act of his life
may be said to have a religious thought attached to it, so powerfully
is the religious instinct developed within him. If you offer him a
cigarette he will propitiate the Powers Above and Around and Below
before he gives himself up to the full enjoyment of it. He does this,
however, with such apparent unconcern that the stranger would never
dream of it, even though he were looking straight at him. But the
knowing will understand. When he sees the Indian quietly blow a puff
of smoke to the East, he knows that is for the purpose of reminding
the good and evil powers that reside there that the smoker wishes
their good influences to rest upon him, or, at least, that the evil
influences shall pass him by. And the same thing when the smoker puffs
to the North, the West, the South, and the _Here_. For the Navaho
Indian believes that there are powers that need propitiating just here,
while the Hopis add the powers of the Above and the Below, thus making
seven cardinal points.
The secret prayers and rites of the underground kivas, or the medicine
_hogans_ of Hopi and Navaho are marvels of sincerity, earnestness, and
reverence. One is impressed whether he understands them or not, and
the white man comes away, or at least I do, with this feeling, viz.,
that I would to God the white race, so long as they worship at all,
would do so with such outward decorum, reverence, and earnestness that
would imply their real inward belief that the thing is more than a
meaningless, perfunctory ceremony that they must go through.
Another remarkable thing I would that the white race would learn from
the Indian is his habit of teaching the victim of a misfortune of
birth that his misfortune is a mark of divine favor. Let me explain
fully. A hunchback or a dwarf among the Indians is not made the butt
of rude wit, ghastly jokes, or of cruel treatment, as is generally
the case with such a one of our own race, but is treated with special
consideration and kindness. I knew a Mohave boy who was humpbacked when
born. The shaman or medicine man explained how the deformity came. He
was a special child, a gift from the gods above. He came from the Above
to the Here on the exquisite pathway of a rainbow. But, unfortunately,
the rainbow rested over a very sharp, rugged mountain peak, which the
gods did not see, and, as the child slid down to the earth, his poor,
little, naked back caught on the sharp peak and was thus deformed.
With such a story of his origin his parents were made happy, and as he
grew older, he was treated with kindness and consideration by his boy
companions. Now, while I would not gain this end by the superstitious
story of the Mohave medicine man, I would that we could in some way
teach our boys to look with compassion upon the misfortune of such as
happen to be afflicted at birth, or to be light-witted, or in some way
not the equal of the majority.
[Illustration: DRINKING THE EMETIC AFTER THE HOPI SNAKE DANCE.]
If an Indian be afflicted with hysteria, or fits of any kind, he is
better treated as the result of his affliction rather than worse. Too
often the white race makes these afflictions the cause of brutal and
indifferent treatment, and adds sorrow to the already overburdened and
distressed souls of the suffering.