RED MAN'S IDEALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19918, 11 April 1928, Page 11

RED MAN'S IDEALS.

CHIEF. OF .THE .SIOUX* VIEWS ON CIVILISATION. THE INDIANS' PHILOSOPHY* Ohiyesa the Conqueror, chief o! ihe Sioux Indians, who was recently in London, was interviewed regarding tho habits and customs of the North American Indians and the outlook of this race. By ordinary standards .an old man, but by Indian standard? a man in the prime of life, being no more than 70 years old, Ohiyesa has been watching all his life the iinal absorption of the Indian civilisation by the voracious civilisation of America. A scientist aud a philosopher of standing—his other name is Dr. Charles Eastman —Ohiyesa has spent his life in an endeavour to preserve as far as might be the civilisation of the North American Indians and in expounding its philosophy, lest that too should become extinct. Most of those who have not looked into those matters since boyhood are inclined to think of the life of the North American Indians as a savage and primitive one, a savagery that was charming, yet savagery jnst the same.

"You say that our civilisation was not a civilisation at all in - your sense ?" Ohiyesa said, "Consider: it Was our custom that women should have not more than five children, and should have them at intervals of three years." He said that this was no merely pious aspiration or counsel of perfection, but the custom of the country. He asked: Have you, in what you call Western civilisation, found a solution as workable as ours for problems like that ? He 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 the philosopher Hobbes of savage life as "nasty, brutish, short," one cannot call tho Indians a savage race. Without Priests or Symbols.

"I think," Ohiyesa said, "that the Indian'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 Ohiyesa said much about the religious thought of the Indians which, says the interviewer, it 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 yet without bleakness. It differs from the nature worship Wordsworth expressed 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. It cannot be readily described, for there is nothing with which to compare it. These negative comparisons were not made by Ohiyesa, who spoke directly, as one who understood. " An Ideal Communism." It would seem to be possible only in the society which the Indiana 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. He said incidentally that the Indian nations in the more southerly parts of the American Continent developed "an Egyptian type of civilisation"; they had a sense of property—and they had art. His race 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. The Sioux nation, which spread over a region as big a3 Europe, was divided into clans and tribes. It had one chief who was chosen from among the lesser chiefs and whdse position was purely honorary and without emolument of any kind. He safi in grand council with the other chiefs once every year to determine foreign policy. The council did not make laws, for the Sioux had a code of laws handed down from the remote past, which, says Ohiyesa, was as perfect as the 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* the chief of each side—and the chief only—was permitted to take one scalp, which was afterwards 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. Effect of Modern Nerves. Ohiyesa is despondent about the effects "of western civilisation, not only on his own race, but upon all others. "He says that we have built only on our nerves, and wonders how long they will stand the racket; he 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_ their philosophy of unselfishness and their disciplined habits of mind and body will leaven the whole lump. It was in an Indian reservation that Ohiyesa first saw the light and until he was 16 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 70, he looks like an athletic man of 40. He says that he expects to live till 100, like a true Sioux. He says he cannot hope to reach 135 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."