Today’s quotes for the day comes from Luther Standing Bear, an Oglala Lakota Sioux Chief.
Raised in the traditions of his people until the age of eleven, he was then educated at the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School of Pennsylvania, where he learned the English language and way of life. His native roots were deep, leaving him in the unique position of being a conduit between cultures.
By the time of his death he had published 4 books and had become a leader at the forefront of the progressive movement aimed at preserving Native American heritage and sovereignty, coming to be known as a strong voice in the education of the white man as to the Native American way of life.
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1) Praise, flattery, exaggerated manners and fine, high-sounding words were no part of Lakota politeness. Excessive manners were put down as insincere, and the constant talker was considered rude and thoughtless. Conversation was never begun at once, or in a hurried manner.
2) Children were taught that true politeness was to be defined in actions rather than in words. They were never allowed to pass between the fire and the older person or a visitor, to speak while others were speaking, or to make fun of a crippled or disfigured person. If a child thoughtlessly tried to do so, a parent, in a quiet voice, immediately set him right.
3) Silence was meaningful with the Lakota, and his granting a space of silence before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regardful of the rule that ‘thought comes before speech.’…and in the midst of sorrow, sickness, death or misfortune of any kind, and in the presence of the notable and great, silence was the mark of respect… strict observance of this tenet of good behavior was the reason, no doubt, for his being given the false characterization by the white man of being a stoic. He has been judged to be dumb, stupid, indifferent, and unfeeling.
4) We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, the winding streams with tangled growth, as ‘wild’. Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was it ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.
5) With all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
6) This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all.
7) It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth… the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
8) Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature learns, and that was to feel beauty. We never railed at the storms, the furious winds, and the biting frosts and snows. To do so intensified human futility, so whatever came we adjusted ourselves, by more effort and energy if necessary, but without complaint.
9) …the old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence.
10) Civilization has been thrust upon me… and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity.
Good Lord , here you go with this ass kissing political correctness .The were savages. Nature is wild.When the Indians were not killing each other they were killing white people or praying to their worthless gods.There’s no such thing as a noble savage. They were cruel and violent as their pagan religions taught them to be.
bb, I lived in North Dakota 5.5 years and met some outstanding American Scandinavians and Plains Indians; of course, there were a few drunken bums in both camps but the Savages migrated to the Urban Jungles.
Thanks Stuck, it’s romantic to look back.
OK, good reference to Luther Standing Bear, but you might want to examine your source which called him ” a leader at the forefront of the progressive movement ” etc. The progressives were the assholes who came up with shit like the Carlisle school and taking children from their families and “educating” their culture out of them.
Looking back has its value, but the Lakota ain’t just historical figures. They’re still here. I have a little book that I read now and then by Joseph Marshall. He’s a contemporary Lakota writer:
If you buy one of his books, do it through TBP’s amazon portal so Jim gets credit for the sale.
OK bb, it’s time for you to STFU now. Go sit over there and suck your thumb quiet-like. Don’t be so scared of indins.
bb
Why don’t you just drive your FedEx truck into a bridge at a 100mph. You would be doing humanity a favor … as well as yourself.
Life and people are complicated.
The manners and traditions that Luther speaks about are not totally dissimilar from other rural cultures of other racial and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, the native people in North America had a long standing tradition of inter tribal violence (warfare and torture) as well as a thriving slave trade – particularly on the west coast – long before the Europeans ever arrived.
The idea that they lived in harmony with the natural world is interesting to me. To a large degree I think the idea is more or less true. But there were few natives on the continent then in comparison to todays multi ethnic population and therefor they put very little pressure on the natural world around them. If they were a nomadic tribe (and many in the west were) then when a game population wore thin they could simply move on. Some followed migrations of various critters – others were more sedentary. Ironically, with the possible exception of the buffalo there is likely as much or more game on the continent today as there was at the time of colonization and expansion. If they did live in harmony then many reserves today in the western part of this country are in stark contrast to how they lived back then. Most northern reserves are surrounded by a sort of game wasteland and hunting near them, in my experience, is a fruitless endeavour.
We have a tendency to look at native people through mythological lenses. But people are people – all are filled with the capacity for good and evil and possessed of free will and the ability to discern one impulse from the other.
I hold them in no higher esteem than any other and take each as they come. To do otherwise is to do yourself and the truth a disservice.
Do these people look familiar?
They are the Aluet people of Siberia…. I have seen pictures of related tribes (damned if I can find them now) where some of the women are fair skinned with red hair and freckles. Aren’t genetics cool?
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Human beings are an interesting species…
Columbus and others found more than a few “White Indians” in their travels.
“Besides Columbus, Cortez found white Indians imprisoned in Montezuma’s palace in Mexico City, George Vancouver saw them on Vancouver Island in 1792, and commander Stiles of the American Navy claimed to have seen the same group in 1848. Humboldt saw about 100 of them in Columbia in 1801. White Indians have been reported among the Mandan tribe along the banks of the Mississippi River, and in one of the first books ever published by a Native American woman, “To The American Indian; Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman” by Lucy Thompson (1916), she devoted an entire chapter of her work titled: “Traditions of the Ancient White People,” where she gives vivid descriptions of the indigenous Caucasian tribe called “Wa-gas,” who had inhabited the northwest region of California prior to her Yurok people. She describes the Wa-gas as moral and civilized, and says that they taught her people all of their arts and sciences, including the fish traps still in use in the 20th century, and says these Wa-gas were all over the continent. These same early white indigenous tribes were also described by another native American woman named Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins in her 1883 book titled “Life Among The Piutes; Their Wrongs and Claims,” who said that her tribe wiped out an entire tribe of 2600 reddish-haired people who lived along the Humboldt River, and this war lasted 3 years, finally trapping the last of them in a cave and burning them out with a large fire.”
http://www.whiteindians.com/politics.html
“Ancient DNA reveals that the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans had European roots. The discovery sheds new light on European prehistory and also solves old mysteries concerning the colonisation of America.”
http://sciencenordic.com/dna-links-native-americans-europeans
Stucky,
This is all very interesting stuff. I am fascinated by what would be called ‘prehistory’. There is more to our world and our civilizations than meets the eye. I somehow get the sense that we have been here before. It is evident that at various points in time throughout our history as a species that we have risen and fallen, migrated, built and destroyed various civilizations – some of them likely global and forgotten all of it. I think we are a much older species in terms of our intelligence and organizational structure than we are willing to admit and if I was ever given the choice of asking and having one question answered it would simply be “What came before?”.
It is a much larger topic than can be covered in a single post on a blog but if I could sum it up in a word it would be ‘fascinating’.