American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

by Zitkala-S̈a

  I do not know what special step might be considered most barbaric. In truth, I would not like to say any graceful movement of the human figure in rhythm to music was ever barbaric. Unless the little man intends to put an end to dances the world over, I fail to see the necessity of checking the Indian dance. If learned scientists advise an occasional relaxation of work or daily routine with such ardor that even the inmates of insane asylums are allowed to dance their dances, then the same logic should hold good elsewhere. The law, at least, should not be partial. If it is right for the insane and idiot to dance, the Indian (who is classed with them) should have the same privilege. The old illiterate Indians, with a past irrevocably dead and no future, have but a few sunny hours between them and the grave.

  And this last amusement, their dance, surely is not begrudged them. The young Indian who has been taught to read English has his choice of amusements, and need not attend the old-time one. He might spend a profitable winter evening in a library, if such a provision had not been misplaced among the “castles in Spain.” Unfortunately for him, there is not even a bookstore where he might buy his reading matter; and because of the inconvenient place from which I get my writing supply, I myself have at times seriously contemplated writing upon the butcher’s brown wrapping-paper. But time and opportunity are within the reach of the Indian youth. With these he may yet make some “vigorous self-recovery” against odd circumstances. It is not so with the old Indians. The fathers and mothers of our tribe have not such weapons against their adversity. They are old and (I have heard them say of themselves) worthless; but what American would shuffle off an old parent as he would an old garment from the body?

  At this moment I turn abruptly away from the voices along the river brink, wishing the river-hackers might first conspire with nature. Here a pony is ready, and soon a gallop over the level lands shall restore to me the sweet sense that God has allotted a place in his vast universe for each of his creatures, both great and small—just as they are.

  The Menace of Peyote (ca. 1916)

  Peyote is a certain cactus that grows in the Southwest. Its dried crown is eaten in the crude. Analysis of peyote by renowned scientists and medical authorities shows it to be a powerful narcotic, dangerous and habit-forming. Peyote victims of all ages from the adult to the babe in arms are themselves the sad verification of this analysis.

  In the early days of the Montezumas, peyote was classed as an intoxicant and forbidden by law. At that time the railroads were unbuilt and easy transportation from the South to North, East and West was impossible. Only the Indians of northern Mexico used peyote in an annual dance; in which both men and women took part. The Christian church, through its manual of 1760, forbade peyote eating. To-day unscrupulous men are shipping peyote into the United States. “It is a large financial proposition. The peyote is raised and imported for a quarter to one cent each and retails for five cents.” (R. D. Hall, of the Commission of Internal Affairs, Y.M.C.A.)

  Peyote eating has spread to tribes in Arizona and Oklahoma. It is now used among the tribes between the Rio Grande and the Pacific, up to the Dakotas and even to Wisconsin and Utah, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Osage, Kiowa, Comanche, Omaha, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Utes of the Uncompahgre, Whiteriver, and Uintah tribes. Colorado mothers have been informed that the Colorado boys on the Texas border are using peyote.

  “Dry whisky” is the common name for peyote. It is a substitute for liquor and drugs. It is the twin brother of alcoholic beverages and first cousin to habit forming drugs. The National prohibition amendment and Drug Acts of our land will have failed of their purpose unless peyote is restricted by law.

  Now, while peyote bills are pending in Congress, is the time for activity. It has been the experience in the past that such bills die in committee. Congress has been misinformed. Peyote has been represented as a sacrament in an Indian religion. “I baptize thee in the name of the Father and Son and Peyote,” is the baptismal formula borrowed from the ritual of the Christian church. Twelve feathers dangling from a long staff represent the twelve apostles. This twelve apostles idea is borrowed from the white man’s Bible. It is not Indian. Rituals of the church have been borrowed as a cloak to hide under, and to evade the law of morals and decency. Moreover religion is the adoration of the Maker with a rational mind. No one in the state of drunkenness, by whatsoever cause, can be in his rational mind; and he cannot practice religion.

  At a recent meeting in Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love,” Rev. Dr. Samuel Elliott asked: “But how, if the peyote bean is used as a sacrament, can we succeed before the congressional committee when a bill for prohibiting its use is being considered? Those who promulgate the cult will deny the right of Congress to interfere with religious freedom.” Reply was made by William Alexander Brown, vice president of the Indian Rights Association: “If religious bodies used vinous wines in the sacrament to such an extent that the Lord’s Supper became an orgy, the Supreme Court could not interfere with their religious rights, but in the transgression of morals and decency the plea of religious liberty cannot prevail.”

  Men, women and children on Indian reservations attend weekly meetings every Saturday night to eat peyote. It takes all day Sunday to recover somewhat from the drunk. Too often in their midnight debaucheries there is a total abandonment of virtue.

  Children of school age are taken out of school in order that they may eat peyote. They are not only permitted but encouraged and sometimes forced to eat it. The result is that these children, being more or less under the pernicious effects of the drug, are not in a responsive condition to justify the Government’s paying salaries to teachers to teach them. Babes in arms are given peyote tea. This indiscriminate use of a powerful narcotic has increased infant mortality. These are crimes committed through ignorance and drunkenness. Dare we uphold these conditions by our own indifference to the moral and physical degeneracy in our midst?

  The Senate Committee, on January 30, 1918, reached that particular part of the annual Indian Appropriation bill allowing $150,000 for suppression of the liquor traffic among Indians. It was at this point that I was granted the privilege of addressing the honorable Senators and beseeching them to include the suppression of peyote, together with its twin brother, alcoholic beverage.

  Congress is appropriating $150,000 to suppress drunkenness among Indians, that in sobriety the Indians may receive the benefits from the Government schools for which this year the entire appropriation is over $11,000,000. Certainly no amount of money appropriated from the national treasury, or the Indians’ own funds held in trust by the Government, would educate or civilize unless the Indian is in his rational mind to meet his part of the obligation. The human system, disabled with dope is no receptacle for the jewels of education and civilization. The Indian is no exception.

  The amendment to the Indian bill to include suppression of peyote is subject to a point of order. But what is the letter of the law, when the spirit is lacking?

  For the alarming menace of peyote there must be found a remedy and soon. If the cure for snake bite is to kill the snake, then the cure for peyote is to kill its unrestricted distribution to the American nation.

  Americanize the First American3 (1921)

  During two summer moons I followed Indian trails over an undulating prairie. The blue canopy of sky came down and touched the earth with a circular horizon. Within such an enclosure of infinite space, virgin soil appeared like a heaving brown sea, slightly tinged with green—a profoundly silent sea. Far out upon its eternal waves now and then came into sight a lone houseboat of crude logs. A captain on one of these strange crafts wirelessed to me an “S.O.S.” My inquiry brought the answer: “Many of these houseboats are set adrift with a funeral pyre for a burial at sea.”

  In low log huts, adrift upon their reservation containing approximately 3000 square miles, are the souls of 7500 Sioux. So widely scattered are they that time and perseverance were required to make even a limited round of visits in the burning sun and par
ching wind of midsummer.

  Listening one day to a sad story of the influenza epidemic among these Indians two years ago, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine this great wild area held in the frigid embrace of winter. I tried to visualize two Government physicians going forth in a Dakota blizzard to visit the sick and dying Sioux. Had they divided the territory evenly between them, each would have had to traverse 2500 square miles to attend to 3750 Indian people. Could they have traveled like whirlwinds to respond to the cries for help, their scant supply of medicines would have been exhausted far too soon. It would have been a physical impossibility for these two wise men to vie with the wind, so they did not. They received their salary as quickly for treating one Indian as if they had cared for a thousand. Therefore, the small medical supply was saved and the Indians died unattended.

  How bitter is the cold of this frozen landscape where the fires of human compassion is unkindled! It is a tragedy to the American Indian and the fair name of America that the good intentions of a benevolent Government are turned into channels of inefficiency and criminal neglect. Nevertheless, the American Indian is our fellow-man. The time is here when for our own soul’s good we must acknowledge him. In the defense of democracy his utter self-sacrifice was unequaled by any other class of Americans. What now does democracy mean to him and his children?

  Many Indian children are orphans through the inevitable havoc of war and influenza epidemic. Poor little Indian orphans! Who in this world will love them as did their own fathers and mothers? Indians love their children dearly. Never in all history was there an Indian mother who left her darling in a basket upon a doorstep. Indians do not believe in corporal punishment. They are keenly aware that children are spirits from another realm, come for a brief sojourn on earth. When and where they found this great truth is wrapped in as much mystery as the origin of their race, which ever puzzles thinking men and women of today. If a correction is necessary, they speak quietly and tenderly to the intelligent soul of the child. Appreciation of the spiritual reality of the child places the Indian abreast with the most advanced thought of the age—our age, in which one of the notable signs of progress is the coordination of humanitarian and educational organizations for child welfare. It is a wonderful work to inculcate in the world’s children today the truths accrued from the ages, that in the near future, when they are grown-up men and women, the world shall reap an ideal harvest. Children are to play, on the world stage, their rôle in solving the riddle of human redemption.

  Speaking of the constructive and widespread activities of the Junior Red Cross, Arthur William Dunn, specialist in civic education, said: “The aim is to cultivate not only a broad human sympathy, but also an Americanism with a world perspective.” Among other things, a school of correspondence is started between the children of America, Europe and Asia. Loving the wee folks as I do and concerned for the salvation of my race, I am watching eagerly for the appearance of the Indian child in the world drama.

  Where are those bright-eyed, black-haired urchins of the out-of-doors? Where are those children whose fathers won so much acclaim for bravery in the World War now closed?

  They are on Indian reservations—small remnants of land not shown on our maps. They are in America, but their environment is radically different from that surrounding other American children. A prolonged wardship, never intended to be permanent, but assumed by our Government as an emergency measure, has had its blighting effect upon the Indian race. Painful discrepancies in the meaning of American freedom to the Indian [have resulted].

  These differences prevail not only on one, but on every Indian reservation. Suffice it to say that by a system of solitary isolation from the world the Indians are virtually prisoners of war in America. Treaties with our Government made in good faith by our ancestors are still unfulfilled, while the Indians have never broken a single promise they pledged to the American people. American citizenship is withheld from some three-fourths of the Indians of the United States. On their reservations they are held subservient to political appointees upon whom our American Congress confers discretionary powers. These are unlovely facts, but they are history. Living conditions on the reservations are growing worse. In the fast approach of winter I dread to think of the want and misery the Sioux will suffer on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

  Womanhood of America, to you I appeal in behalf of the Red Man and his children. Heed the lonely mariner’s signal of distress. Give him those educational advantages pressed with so much enthusiasm upon the foreigner. Revoke the tyrannical powers of Government superintendents over a voiceless people and extend American opportunities to the first American—the Red Man.

  Bureaucracy Versus Democracy (1921)

  We have a bureaucracy wheel with a $14,000,000 hub and a rim of autocratic discretionary power. Between the two are the segments suppressing the energies of the Indian people. About 90 years ago the American Congress created the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a temporary measure and it was not intended for a permanent institution. Steadily, through 90 years, the bureau has enlarged itself regardless of the diminishing Indian population, “educated and civilized” all this time.

  Official power, official business and official numbers have been augmented, impinging upon the liberty-loving Indians of America a wardship growing more deadly year by year.

  Whenever a plea for our human rights is made, this despotic-grown bureaucracy issues contrary arguments through its huge machinery for reasons best known to itself. It silences our inquiring friends by picturing to them the Indians’ utter lack of business training and how easily they would fall victims to the wiles of unscrupulous white men were bureau supervision removed from all Indians.

  I would suggest that Congress enact more stringent laws to restrain the unscrupulous white men. It is a fallacy in a democratic government to defranchise a law-abiding race that the lawless may enjoy the privileges of citizenship. Further would I suggest that this bureau be relieved of its supervising an orderly people and assigned to the task of restraining the unscrupulous citizens of whatever color who are menacing the liberty and property of the Indians. It is true the Indians lack business training and experience. Therefore, I would suggest business schools for the Indians, together with a voice in the administration of their own affairs, that they may have the opportunity to overcome their ignorance and strengthen their weakness.

  We insist upon our recognition by America as really normal and quite worth-while human beings.

  We want American citizenship for every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States.

  We want a democracy wheel whose hub shall be an organization of progressive Indian citizens and whose rim shall be the Constitution of your American Government—a wheel whose segments shall become alive with growing community interests and thrift activities of the Indians themselves. Indians require first-hand experience as others do to develop their latent powers. They proved their loyality to country by their unequaled volunteer service in your army in the World War now closed.

  You have enfranchised the black race, and are now actively waging a campaign of Americanization among the foreign-born. Why discriminate against the noble aborigines of America—they who have no other father-motherland? The gospel of humanitarianism, like charity, must begin at home, among home people, and from thence spread out into all the world.

  Americanize the first Americans. Give them freedom to do their own thinking; to exercise their judgment; to hold open forums for the expression of their thought, and finally permit them to manage their own personal business. Let no one deprive the American Indians of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

  A Dakota Ode to Washington4 (1922)

  The Mystic Circle

  Upon the prairie grass sat aged men and women, in mystic circle, their bronzed faces upturned to the stars. Through many winters their once raven hair was whitened till in the uncertain twilight on the plains it appeared luminous about their heads. White blossoming manho
od, white flowering womanhood, these seven Dakotah wicareana and winocrana held secret conclave under the night sky.

  Keepers of the sacred eagle mysteries, priest and priestess of the Seven Council Fires of their people, they are sages of that other day when Indian camps vied with huge cloud shadows drifting on the playground of the prairie. To-night they have chosen from out their seven a member of the smallest fire, summoned before them a Yankton Dakotah of the young generation. The spokesman, a veritable grandfather of the federated tribes, addressed her saying: “To-morrow is the day of days. Loyal Americans will gather before a great stone shrine at the Nation’s capital. South Dakotans beckon to us, the Dakotah to join them. We accept the gracious invitation of our pale-face brothers. This is brotherhood.”

  As he momentarily paused, his quiet voice floated out into the eternal spaces among the stars, seemed to echo and reecho against the stillness of the night in the concave sky, “This is brotherhood!” The voice continued, “You are called as our messenger, our interpreter. Are you willing to serve?” Without hesitation the answer came, “I am.” The other members of the circle, hitherto silent, responded in approval, “Be it so.” “Hec- etu.” The spokesman said, “You have answered well. Service is the highest privilege.”