THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN(印度安人之魂)

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THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

THE SOUL OF THE

INDIAN

An Interpretation

CHARLES ALEXANDER EASTMAN (OHIYESA)

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

TO MY WIFE ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN IN GRATEFUL

RECOGNITION OF HER EVER-INSPIRING COMPANIONSHIP IN

THOUGHT AND WORK AND IN LOVE OF HER MOST INDIAN-

LIKE VIRTUES I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

I speak for each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,

And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads,

And his big blessing downward sheds. SIDNEY LANIER.

But there's a dome of nobler span, A temple given Thy faith,

that bigots dare not ban-- Its space is heaven! It's roof star-pictured

Nature's ceiling, Where, trancing the rapt spirit's feeling, And God Himself

to man revealing, Th' harmonious spheres Make music, though

unheard their pealing By mortal ears! THOMAS CAMPBELL.

God! sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves,

with your soft and soul-like sounds! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain

storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders

of the elements, Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! . . . Earth,

with her thousand voices, praises GOD! COLERIDGE.

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

FOREWORD

"We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has

been handed down to us their children. It teaches us to be thankful, to be

united, and to love one another! We never quarrel about religion."

Thus spoke the great Seneca orator, Red Jacket, in his superb reply to

Missionary Cram more than a century ago, and I have often heard the

same thought expressed by my countrymen.

I have attempted to paint the religious life of the typical American

Indian as it was before he knew the white man. I have long wished to do

this, because I cannot find that it has ever been seriously, adequately, and

sincerely done. The religion of the Indian is the last thing about him that

the man of another race will ever understand.

First, the Indian does not speak of these deep matters so long as he

believes in them, and when he has ceased to believe he speaks

inaccurately and slightingly.

Second, even if he can be induced to speak, the racial and religious

prejudice of the other stands in the way of his sympathetic comprehension.

Third, practically all existing studies on this subject have been made

during the transition period, when the original beliefs and philosophy of

the native American were already undergoing rapid disintegration.

There are to be found here and there superficial accounts of strange

customs and ceremonies, of which the symbolism or inner meaning was

largely hidden from the observer; and there has been a great deal of

material collected in recent years which is without value because it is

modern and hybrid, inextricably mixed with Biblical legend and

Caucasian philosophy. Some of it has even been invented for

commercial purposes. Give a reservation Indian a present, and he will

possibly provide you with sacred songs, a mythology, and folk-lore to

order!

My little book does not pretend to be a scientific treatise. It is as true

as I can make it to my childhood teaching and ancestral ideals, but from

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

the human, not the ethnological standpoint. I have not cared to pile up

more dry bones, but to clothe them with flesh and blood. So much as has

been written by strangers of our ancient faith and worship treats it chiefly

as matter of curiosity. I should like to emphasize its universal quality, its

personal appeal!

The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their

age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded of us that

we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar.

They even told us that we were eternally lost, unless we adopted a tangible

symbol and professed a particular form of their hydra-headed faith.

We of the twentieth century know better! We know that all religious

aspiration, all sincere worship, can have but one source and one goal.

We know that the God of the lettered and the unlettered, of the Greek and

the barbarian, is after all the same God; and, like Peter, we perceive that

He is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth Him

and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him.

CHARLES A. EASTMAN (OHIYESA)

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

CONTENTS

I. THE GREAT MYSTERY 1

II. THE FAMILY ALTAR 25

III. CEREMONIAL AND SYMBOLIC WORSHIP 51

IV. BARBARISM AND THE MORAL CODE 85

V. THE UNWRITTEN SCRIPTURES 117

VI. ON THE BORDER-LAND OF SPIRITS 147

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

I THE GREAT MYSTERY

Solitary Worship. The Savage Philosopher. The Dual Mind.

Spiritual Gifts versus Material Progress. The Paradox of "Christian

Civilization."

The original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the

"Great Mystery" that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was

exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the

fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in this life.

The worship of the "Great Mystery" was silent, solitary, free from all

self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and

imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in

wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is

nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come

between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any

way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men

were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity.

Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who

were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting,

nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.

Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem

it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the

mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom

of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and

yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in

filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-

Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the

rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic

southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and

inland seas--He needs no lesser cathedral!

That solitary communion with the Unseen which was the highest

expression of our religious life is partly described in the word bambeday,

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

literally "mysterious feeling," which has been variously translated

"fasting" and "dreaming." It may better be interpreted as "consciousness of

the divine."

The first bambeday, or religious retreat, marked an epoch in the life of

the youth, which may be compared to that of confirmation or conversion

in Christian experience. Having first prepared himself by means of the

purifying vapor-bath, and cast off as far as possible all human or fleshly

influences, the young man sought out the noblest height, the most

commanding summit in all the surrounding region. Knowing that God

sets no value upon material things, he took with him no offerings or

sacrifices other than symbolic objects, such as paints and tobacco.

Wishing to appear before Him in all humility, he wore no clothing save his

moccasins and breech-clout. At the solemn hour of sunrise or sunset he

took up his position, overlooking the glories of earth and facing the "Great

Mystery," and there he remained, naked, erect, silent, and motionless,

exposed to the elements and forces of His arming, for a night and a day to

two days and nights, but rarely longer. Sometimes he would chant a

hymn without words, or offer the ceremonial "filled pipe." In this holy

trance or ecstasy the Indian mystic found his highest happiness and the

motive power of his existence.

When he returned to the camp, he must remain at a distance until he

had again entered the vapor-bath and prepared himself for intercourse with

his fellows. Of the vision or sign vouchsafed to him he did not speak,

unless it had included some commission which must be publicly fulfilled.

Sometimes an old man, standing upon the brink of eternity, might reveal to

a chosen few the oracle of his long-past youth.

The native American has been generally despised by his white

conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his

religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury.

To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from

Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the

Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a

complex society a source of needless peril and temptation. Furthermore,

it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride,

cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree--a

matter profoundly important to him.

It was not, then, wholly from ignorance or improvidence that he failed

to establish permanent towns and to develop a material civilization. To

the untutored sage, the concentration of population was the prolific mother

of all evils, moral no less than physical. He argued that food is good,

while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded

than the pestilence following upon crowded and unsanitary dwellings was

the loss of spiritual power inseparable from too close contact with one's

fellow-men. All who have lived much out of doors know that there is a

magnetic and nervous force that accumulates in solitude and that is

quickly dissipated by life in a crowd; and even his enemies have

recognized the fact that for a certain innate power and self-poise, wholly

independent of circumstances, the American Indian is unsurpassed among

men.

The red man divided mind into two parts,--the spiritual mind and the

physical mind. The first is pure spirit, concerned only with the essence

of things, and it was this he sought to strengthen by spiritual prayer, during

which the body is subdued by fasting and hardship. In this type of prayer

there was no beseeching of favor or help. All matters of personal or

selfish concern, as success in hunting or warfare, relief from sickness, or

the sparing of a beloved life, were definitely relegated to the plane of the

lower or material mind, and all ceremonies, charms, or incantations

designed to secure a benefit or to avert a danger, were recognized as

emanating from the physical self.

The rites of this physical worship, again, were wholly symbolic, and

the Indian no more worshiped the Sun than the Christian adores the Cross.

The Sun and the Earth, by an obvious parable, holding scarcely more of

poetic metaphor than of scientific truth, were in his view the parents of all

organic life. From the Sun, as the universal father, proceeds the

quickening principle in nature, and in the patient and fruitful womb of our

mother, the Earth, are hidden embryos of plants and men. Therefore our

reverence and love for them was really an imaginative extension of our

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

love for our immediate parents, and with this sentiment of filial piety was

joined a willingness to appeal to them, as to a father, for such good gifts as

we may desire. This is the material or physical prayer.

The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water,

Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always

secondary and intermediate in character. We believed that the spirit

pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some

degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the

waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an

object of reverence.

The Indian loved to come into sympathy and spiritual communion

with his brothers of the animal kingdom, whose inarticulate souls had for

him something of the sinless purity that we attribute to the innocent and

irresponsible child. He had faith in their instincts, as in a mysterious

wisdom given from above; and while he humbly accepted the supposedly

voluntary sacrifice of their bodies to preserve his own, he paid homage to

their spirits in prescribed prayers and offerings.

In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with

the influence of pure reason over its devotees. The Indian was a logical

and clear thinker upon matters within the scope of his understanding, but

he had not yet charted the vast field of nature or expressed her wonders in

terms of science. With his limited knowledge of cause and effect, he saw

miracles on every hand,--the miracle of life in seed and egg, the miracle of

death in lightning flash and in the swelling deep! Nothing of the

marvelous could astonish him; as that a beast should speak, or the sun

stand still. The virgin birth would appear scarcely more miraculous

than is the birth of every child that comes into the world, or the miracle of

the loaves and fishes excite more wonder than the harvest that springs

from a single ear of corn.

Who may condemn his superstition? Surely not the devout Catholic,

or even Protestant missionary, who teaches Bible miracles as literal fact!

The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American

Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible

as those of the Hebrews of old. If we are of the modern type of mind,

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

that sees in natural law a majesty and grandeur far more impressive than

any solitary infraction of it could possibly be, let us not forget that, after

all, science has not explained everything. We have still to face the

ultimate miracle,--the origin and principle of life! Here is the supreme

mystery that is the essence of worship, without which there can be no

religion, and in the presence of this mystery our attitude cannot be very

unlike that of the natural philosopher, who beholds with awe the Divine in

all creation.

It is simple truth that the Indian did not, so long as his native

philosophy held sway over his mind, either envy or desire to imitate the

splendid achievements of the white man. In his own thought he rose

superior to them! He scorned them, even as a lofty spirit absorbed in its

stern task rejects the soft beds, the luxurious food, the pleasure-worshiping

dalliance of a rich neighbor. It was clear to him that virtue and happiness

are independent of these things, if not incompatible with them.

There was undoubtedly much in primitive Christianity to appeal to this

man, and Jesus' hard sayings to the rich and about the rich would have

been entirely comprehensible to him. Yet the religion that is preached in

our churches and practiced by our congregations, with its element of

display and self-aggrandizement, its active proselytism, and its open

contempt of all religions but its own, was for a long time extremely

repellent. To his simple mind, the professionalism of the pulpit, the paid

exhorter, the moneyed church, was an unspiritual and unedifying thing,

and it was not until his spirit was broken and his moral and physical

constitution undermined by trade, conquest, and strong drink, that

Christian missionaries obtained any real hold upon him. Strange as it

may seem, it is true that the proud pagan in his secret soul despised the

good men who came to convert and to enlighten him!

Nor were its publicity and its Phariseeism the only elements in the

alien religion that offended the red man. To him, it appeared shocking

and almost incredible that there were among this people who claimed

superiority many irreligious, who did not even pretend to profess the

national faith. Not only did they not profess it, but they stooped so low

as to insult their God with profane and sacrilegious speech! In our own

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