THE INDIAN AND IMMORTALITY
To the materialist immortality is a foolish dream, to the agnostic an
unjustified human craving, to the simple Christian a belief, and to the
transcendentalist a confident hope, but to the Indian it is as positive
an assurance as is life. The white race has complicated its belief in
the future life with many theological dogmas. The Roman Catholic church
has its purgatory, as well as its paradise and hell; the first as a
place of purging for the sins committed in the body and that must be
burned away, the second the abode of the blest, and the third the place
into which the damned are cast. The Seventh Day Adventists believe that
only those who are saved by “the blood of Christ” and obedience to
his commands are blessed with the gift of immortal life. They contend
it is a free gift as an act of God’s grace and is not inherent in the
soul or spirit of mankind. Those who refuse to accept salvation by the
vicarious atonement of Christ, they believe, will be annihilated. The
Presbyterian believes that a certain number of mankind are foreordained
for salvation and heaven, and another number for damnation and hell,
from the foundation of the world. The Universalist believes that all
men will ultimately be saved and therefore enjoy heaven, whilst others
have a belief in a “conditional” immortality.
The Indian believes in immortality without any admixture of complex
theological ideas. His is a simple faith which he accepts as he
accepts life. He believes that when he dies his spirit goes to its new
life just as at birth he came into this life. And he believes that all
the objects he used on earth--food, clothing, articles of adornment,
baskets, horses, saddles, blankets--have a spirit-life as well as he
has. Hence, when one dies, his friends throw upon his funeral pyre his
clothing, blankets, and other personal belongings, utensils for his
comfort, food for his nourishment on the way to the “under world,” or
land of the future, and strangle his horse that its spirit may aid
him on his journey. When death approaches he faces it with calmness,
equanimity and serenity. Fearless and unafraid he awaits the coming of
the last great enemy. In effect, he cries out with Browning:
“I would hate that death bandaged my eyes,
And forbore, and bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it; fare like my peers,
The heroes of old.”
No shirking for him; as calmly as Socrates took the bowl of fatal
hemlock, the Indian awaits death and proudly passes on to the new life.
Those who are left behind may wail for their loss, but the one who
departs asks for and receives no sympathy.
Now, it is this simple acceptation of death as a natural thing that I
would have the white race learn. And yet it can never come to us as
an act of simple faith as it is with the Indian. Our civilization has
spoiled us for “simple faith.” That is practically impossible, save to
a few souls who, unlike the rest of us, have “kept themselves unspotted
from the world” of speculative thought, or theological dogma. It can
come (and does with many) as the result of religious training, or
as it did to Browning and Whitman. What wonderfully different minds
these two men had. One an aristocrat, the other a democrat, yet both
full of love for mankind, and each teaching with vigor and power the
Fatherhood of God, the real brotherhood of man, and the immortality
of the soul. Read Browning’s _Prospice_, part of which I have already
quoted, _Evelyn Hope_, _Abt Vogler_, and these three stanzas with which
he opens his _La Saziaz_, and elsewhere calls a _Pisgah Sight_:
“Good, to forgive:
Best, to forget!
Living we fret;
Dying, we live.
Fretless and free,
Soul, clap thy pinion!
Earth have dominion,
Body, o’er thee!
Wander at will,
Day after day,--
Wander away,
Wandering still--
Soul that canst soar!
Body may slumber:
Body shall cumber
Soul-flight no more.
Waft of soul’s wing!
What lies above?
Sunshine and Love,
Sky blue and Spring!
Body hides--where?
Ferns of all feather,
Mosses and heather,
Yours be the care!”
Compare these utterances with Whitman’s rugged and forceful words:
“Passive and faltering,
The words, _the Dead_, I write,
For living are the Dead,
(Haply the only living, only real,
And I, the apparition, the spectre.)”
Again, in his _To One Shortly to Die_, what a triumphant note is in the
last two lines:
“I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,
I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.”
How perfectly Indian, this attitude, this refusal to be sorry, and
to offer congratulations rather than regrets. In his _Night on the
Prairies_ his perfect assurance as to the future is clearly expressed,
and while measuring himself with the great thoughts of space and
eternity that fill him as he gazes upon the myriads of globes above, he
exclaims:
“Now I absorb immortality and peace, I admire death....
O, I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.”
In one poem he speaks of “awaiting death with perfect equanimity,” and
in another says:
“Thee, holiest minister of Heaven--thee, envoy, usherer, guide at
last of all,
Rich, florid loosener of the stricture knot call’d life,
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.”
And the reason for all this restfulness as to Death and the Future is
expressed in his Assurances:
“I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are
provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths
of little children are provided for. (Did you think life was so
well provided for, and Death, the purport of all life, is not well
provided for?)
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of
them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone
down, are provided for, to the minutest points.
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere, at any
time, is provided for in the inherences of things.
I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space, but I
believe Heavenly Death provides for all.”
So, reader, I care not how it comes into your soul, so that you have it
there, a rich and precious possession, this living, active, potential
belief in immortality. If you know _you are_ now, and that you will
never end, you will find that life itself becomes more enlarged and
dignified. You will not be content with mere earthly aims, you will not
rest satisfied to be a mere money-getter, but, realizing the immensity
of your own capacities and powers, you will reach out for the eternal
things, the realities that abide forever. For Joaquin Miller never
wrote a truer word than when he said:
“For all you can hold in your dead cold hand,
Is what you have given away.”
This forever settles a thoughtful man’s conception of mere
acquisitiveness. Such gatherings-together are unworthy the soul that
feels and knows its own immortality. It needs a larger aim, a more
worthy object.
Another thing in connection with what we call death, the white race
may well learn from the Indian. How often does press and pulpit expend
itself in finding superlatives to pour out in lavish eulogy over the
dead, who, while alive, never did a thing to win the love of their
fellows. Such eulogy is unknown among the Indians. The “preacher of
an Indian funeral sermon” would no more dare wrongfully praise or
laud his subject than he would falsely execrate him. He must speak
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and while he
is not called upon to expatiate upon the wrong-doings, the foibles or
weaknesses of his subject, he must say no word of praise that is not
justly earned and strictly true.
If this law were applied to the white race, what different funeral
sermons and orations we should hear and read; and what different
inscriptions we should read upon the tombstones found in our
grave-yards.