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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1913)
6 THE CHEMA W A AM ERICAN him. Moreover, let us be wary of interfering overmuch with either his work or his play. It is mere tyranny, for instance, to stop all Indian dances. Some which are obscene, or which are dangerous on other grounds, must be prohibited. Others should be permitted, and many of them encouraged. Nothing that tells for the joy of life, in any com munity, should be lightly touched. A few Indians may be able to turn themselves into ordinary citizens in a dozen years. Give these exceptional Indians every chance; but remember that the majority must change gradually, and that it will take generations to make the change complete. Help them to make it in such fashion that when the change is accomplished we shall find that the original and valuable elements in the Indian culture have been retained, so that the new citizens come with full hands into the great field of American life, and contribute to that life something of marked value to all of us, something which it would be a misfortune to all of us to have destroyed. As an example, take the case of these Hopi mesa towns, perched in such boldly picturesque fashion on high, sheer-walled rock ridges. Many good people wish to force the Hopis to desert these towns, and live in isolated families in nice tin-roofed houses on the plains below. I believe that this would be a mistake from the standpoint of the In dians—not to mention depriving our country of something as notable and as attractive as the castles that have helped make the Rhine beauti ful and famous. Let the effort be to insist on cleanliness and sanita tion in the villages as they are, and especially to train the Indians themselves to insist thereon; and to make it easier for them to get wa ter. In insisting on cleanliness, remember that we preach a realizable ideal; our own ancestors lived in villages as filthy not three centuries ago. The breezy coolness of the rocky mesa top and the magnificent outlook would make it to me personally a far more attractive dwelling- place than the hot, dusty plains. Morever, the present Hopi house, with its thick roof, is cooler and pleasanter than a tin-roofed house. I believe it would be far wiser gradually to develop the Hopi house it self, making it more commodious and convenient, rather than to aban don it and plant the Indian in a brand-new Government-buiit house, pre cisely like some ten miilion other cheap houses. The Hopi architecture is a product of its own environment; it is as picturesque as anything of the kind which our art students travel to Spain in order to study. Therefore let us keep it. The Hopi architecture can be kept, adapted, and developed just as we have kept, adapted, and developed the Mission architecture of the southwest—with the results seen in beautiful Leland Stanford University. The University of New Mexico is, most wisely, modeled on these pueblo bindings; and Mr. Frank Mead, the architect,
