Chief of the Sioux

Evening Star, Issue 19841, 14 April 1928, Page 10

Chief of the Sioux

Red Man’s Civilisation

The Truth About the Scalps

Is the Indian Doomed?

Ohiyesa tlio Conqueror, Chief of the Sioux Indians, who has boon in Lou- j don, was interviewed recently by a re- | prcscntalivc of the ‘Observer.’ j Hy our standards an old man, but by Indian standards a man in the prime of life, being no more than seventy years old, ho has been watching all his life the final absorption of the Indian civilisation by the voracious civilisation of America. A scientist ami a. philosopher of standing (his other name is Dr Clmrles Kastman), lie lias spent his life in an endeavor to preserve as far as might be the civilisation of the North'’American Indians and in expending its philosophy, lest that, too, should become extinct. Host of ns who have not looked into these matters since boyhood arc inclined to think of the life of the North American Indians as a savage and primitive one, a savagery that was charming, yet savagery just the same. “ You say that our civilisation was not a civilisation at all in your sense?” Oliiycsa said. ‘‘Consider: it was our custom that women should have not more than live children, and should have them at intervals of three years.” Ho said that this was no merely pious aspiration or counsel of perfection, but the custom of the country. The Indian had his sexual life in compicio control; his desires became seasonal; the custom did not irk him, for ho had no desire to depart from it. He asked: ‘‘Have yon, in what you call Western civilisation, found a solution as workable as ours for problems like that?” Ho said also that it was usual for Indians to live till they were 135 years old; the average span of life was 100 years. If one accepts the definition by tho philosopher Hobbes of savage life

o as “nasty, brutish, short” one cannot 1 call the Indians a savage race, j “I think,” Ohiyesa said. “that the I I ndian’s contribution to civilisation is his | deep spiritual thought. It is different from the Christian spiritual thought, because that is involved always in materialism. There is always the collection, and the best preacher is paid the best.” Afterwards be said much about the religious thought of the Indians.which is impossible to report in the ordinary way. Theirs is a religion without symbols, without priests, and without church; it is in pantheism, and finds God in waterfalls and starry skies: it is a religion more individual than Luther’s and vet without bleakness. It differs from the nature worship Wordsworth expresed in his lines on Tintern Abbey, being without the practical applications which Wordsworth gave it. It does not _ rise into poetry or expression of that kind; it is calmer. 'lt cannot be readily described, for there is nothing with which to compare it. These negative comparisons were not made by Ohiyesa, wiio spoke directly, as one who understood. It would seem to be possible only in the society which the Indians evolved. They had practically no property; they were nomadic—for they thought it was unhygienic to stay long in one place. “They practised an ideal communism,” Ohiyesa said. They had no arts; they did not even carve their weapons. (Ho said that tho Indian nations in rhe more southerly parts of the American Continent developed “an Egyptian ■ type of civilisation”; they had a sense of property and they had art.) They had an oral literature, including a Creation story, which some have declared to be better than Genesis and which reconciles the Hebrew story with . evolution.

iNDUtH LAWS AMD CUSTOMS

The Sioux uaiioii, which spread over a region as lug as Europe, was divided into clans amUribes. lb had one chief, who was chosen from among the lesser chiefs, and whoso position was purely honorary and without emolument of any kind. He sat in grand council with the other chiefs once every year to detenuiue foreign policy. The council did not make laws, lor the Sioux had a code of laws handed down from the remote past, which, says Ohiyesa., was as perfect as I ho mind of man could conceive and never required alteration. The women of the, nation had a final veto on all treaties made by the chiefs. The wars -were only athletic contests; after each battle tile chief of each side (and the chief only) was permitted to take otic scalp, which was nitenvards given a ceremonial burial. When the Europeans arrived they placed a. bounty on scalps, and what had been the strictest ceremonial became a barbarous and unruly practice. Ohiyesa is despondent about the effects of western civilisation, not only on his own race, but upon all others. He says that wo have built only on

our nerves, and wonders how long they will stand the racket; ho speaks of the newer generation born “with small chins and strained nerves.” He does not complain that his own nation have been, in the political sense, and in most other senses, absorbed. He limits himself to hoping that thenphilosophy of unselfishness and their disciplined habits of mind and body will leaven the whole lump. .He himself was born in an Indian reservation, and till he was sixteen his clan was still at war with the whites. His father was “Many Lightnings.” Ohiyesa was for many years medical officer in one of the reservations, and afterwards attorney at Washington for the Sioux nation. Though seventy, he looks like an athletic man of forty. He says that he expects to live till a hundred, like a true Sioux. He cannot hope to reach a hundred and thirty-five under modern conditions—especially as there are no more buffaloes. For he thinks buffaloes the most nourishing of meats—better even than bear’s meat.

THE TUBERCULOSIS SCOURGE

Tlu; early extinction of the lied Indian is envisaged in a report by the American Indian Dclenco Association. Tliis organisation played an important part in persuading the United States Senate to approve a recent Bill authorising a searching investigation of the conditions under which the Bed Indians arc now living, and of their relations with the Indian Bureau, which acts under the Department of the Interior as their legal guardian. it is probable that the investigation will intensify rather than abate the highly acrimonious arguments which have been raging for sonic months now over the results ol the Indian Bureau’s administration. “ According to the United States Bureau of Census, Division of Vital Statistics, the steady and swift rise of the Indian dcatli-rale through the four preceding census years, including 1924, was continued through 1925,” declared the association. “The census data _ is for thirty-three States, the District of Columbia, and States containing largo Indian populations, such as California, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Michigan, Kansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Utah, and North Carolina. “The death-rate of the general population is below J2 per 1,000 a year. The Federal census gives the Indian death-rate in tire registration area as 17.0 for 1921, 19.2 for 1922, 22.5 in 1923, and 25.9 in 1924. “The new tabulations of the United States census complete the year 1925. They show an Indian death-rate of 28.5 deaths for each 1.000 Indians. This carries the Indian death-rate higher than the birth-rate.

“The Indian death-rate is now 1 per 1,000 of population higher than the average Indian birth-rate for 1922, 1923. and 1924. It is 3.4 a 1,000 higher than the Indian birth-rate for the whole country as stated by the Indian Bureau in its current annual report. The Indian deathrate in this last census year rose 10 per cent, over the rate of the preceding year. The total increase in the death-rate sine© 1921 is 62 per cent., and the Indian deathrate as thus disclosed is more than two and a-third times the death-rate of the general population. “ These figures mean race extermination. Their greatest significance lies in the steady upward curve of the death-rate year after year. “We call your attention to complete the picture to the Indian Bureau’s mortality tables for the fiscal year ending Jim© 30, 1927. These tables, in contrast to the Federal census tallies, show an Indian death-rate in 1925 only slightly increased over that of 1921. They show a 1925 death-rate of 23.4 a 1,000, high enough, being nearly twice the general death-rate, but the Federal census for that year was 10 per cent, higher. “In 1926 the bureau pushed down its showing of Indian deaths to 21.8 a 1,000. Thus the census figures now stand 30.7 per cent, higher than the Indian Bureau figures. “It will interest you to know that the same census for 1925 shows_ the Indian death-rate from tuberculosis to be about twice as high as that of the negro population, whose death-rate from tuberculosis is extraordinarily high.”