The Living Spirit of the Indian

Painting by Jim Strong

THE LIVING SPIRIT OF THE INDIAN


The feathered and blanketed figure
of the American Indian
has come to symbolize the American continent.
He is the man, who through centuries,
has been moulded and sculpted
by the same hand that shaped the mountains,
forests, and plains,
and marked the course of its rivers.

The American Indian is of the soil,
whether it be the region of forests,
plains, pueblos, or mesas.
He fits into the landscape,
for the hand that fashioned the continent
also fashioned the man
for his surroundings.
He once grew as naturally
as the wild sunflowers;
he belongs just as the buffalo belonged.

With a physique that fitted,
the man developed fitting skills--
crafts which today are called American.
And the body had a soul,
also formed and moulded by
the same master hand of harmony.
Out of the Indian approach to existence
there came a great freedom--
an intense and absorbing love for nature;
a respect for life;
enriching faith in a Supreme Power;
and principles of truth, honesty,
generosity, equity, and brotherhood.

Becoming possesed of a fitting philosophy and art,
it was by them native man perpetuated
his identity; stamped it into history
and soul of this country--
made land and man one.

By living--struggling, losing, meditating,
imbibing, aspiring, achieving--
he wrote himself into the ineraseable evidence--
an evidence that can be, and often has been
ignored, but never totally
destroyed.

The white man does not understand the Indian
for reason that he does not understand America.
He is too far removed from its formative processes.
The roots of the tree of his life
have not yet grasped the rock and the soil.
The white man is still troubled
with primitive fears; he still has
in his consciousness the perils
of this frontier continent, some of its
fastnesses not yet being yielded
to his questing footsteps
and inquiring eyes.
The man from Europe is still an foreigner
and an alien.

But in the Indian
the spirit of the land is still
vested; it will be
until other men are able to divine
and meet its rhythms.

When the Indian has forgotten the music
of his forefathers, when the sound
of the tom-tom is no more,
when the memory of his horses
is no longer told in story--
he will be dead.

When from him has been taken
all that is his, all that he has
visioned in nature, all that has come to him
from infinite sources, he then,
truly, will be a dead Indian.

Standing Bear
Chief of the Oglala Sioux ( 1905-1939)