Ishi - The Last Yahi Indian

Winter Steel ^ | FR Post 7-24-02 | Editorial Staff

[Pistias]

nasty, brutish and short

But Hobbes knew nothing of love!

[another cricket]

The starving part is the big part and as you learn more about these societies you learn that at least one moon a year was referred to as "Starvation moon" Everybody got very hungry although not all died.

A free life, wandering with one's family and friends, with no needs but the barest and a life where people sing and death means nothing.

I think you have the gypsies confused with the Indians. And there was no more revelry then usual and as for the disregard for pain, get real. No one likes to be hurt. Things like the sun dance were meant to remove the weak and useless from the tribe because one non-producing person could mean the death of all. Death did not mean nothing.

I wonder if you would find it so appealing the first time you had a child born with a handicap and you had to take him out into the forest to die?

Life it what you make of it. If you are "stultifying in urbanity" it is by your choice and you would soon do the same in the wild. If you find moments of happiness and joy now then you would out there too. And moments are all we have.

I would bet however that you are a guy and so your viewpoint of this lifestyle is going to be a lot rosier then mine. Also you haven't seen and lived a subsistence lifestyle.

a.cricket

[Pistias]

as for the disregard for pain, get real. No one likes to be hurt

LOL, they used to torture themselves to restore the land! I call the Sun Dance disregard for pain; and I'd be curious as to the numbers on the deaths at the Dance. I'm under the impression that the strongest and bravest young men underwent the ritual torture, not the old and weak.

you haven't seen and lived a subsistence lifestyle

Well, you don't know that. But not for long, anyhow.

I wonder if you would find it so appealing the first time you had a child born with a handicap and you had to take him out into the forest to die?

Was that common? I know the Spartans did that, but I've never heard of a tribe that did. I have heard of Hopi that had cripples live to fifty, and an Australian aboriginal tribe that carried a legless woman for her entire life.

[Pistias]

I would bet however that you are a guy and so your viewpoint of this lifestyle is going to be a lot rosier then mine

You must be a mother. Yeah, I'm a young man. Must be wanderlust.

[another cricket]

The Hopi were a settled tribe. Farmers in fact. Don't know about the Aborigines. They are not my area of expertise.

The nomadic tribes on the other hand could not afford to have constant drains on the tribal resources. As to the sun dance it wasn't a disregard for pain but a social custom that would identify the strongest and bravest for reproduction. You had the scars you got the girl. Or girls as the case may be.

For the old warriors there was the custom known as "Staking" where they would tie an old warrior to a stake with a lead for his last battle. His positions were then divided and his widow(s) left to die unless one of her daughters took pity on her and could talk her husband into giving her a place in her tent. Or if they were young enough to be taken in by other men in the tribe as second wives.

I don’t have any kids but I have helped a few into this world and help raise them under the most primitive of conditions. Give me the 21-century to raise kids any day. It may not be perfect and what is? But it beats the devil out of raising them in primitive conditions where they die from diarrhea or from stepping on a piece of sharp stone.

Sort of the reason that men may invent but it is the families that are the motivation for the inventions.

a.cricket

[Pistias]

Staking

I can't help but admire that. To go out like that, in battle...foolish youth, perhaps. I seem to recall something about the Lakota (?) war parties having a custom that the Ten Bravest (Ten Dogs?) would stake their black sashes into the ground with a ceremonial arrow at the start of battle and would sooner die than remove them, only being able to retreat if a comrade unstaked them as they retreated.

That's something we lose of necessity in our kind of society...it's certainly safer, but just as the lowest elements of such a soul are raised, the highest are lowered. Seems like a raw deal, but I guess I just want to have my cake and eat it too.

I have helped a few into this world and help raise them under the most primitive of conditions

Really? Peace Corps?

[another cricket]

You might want to go out like that. I doubt your wife however would be all that thrilled with her role. ~smile

but just as the lowest elements of such a soul are raised, the highest are lowered.

Life is, once again, what you make of it. The highest part of your soul will always rise if that is what you want.

Missionary kid. South America for the most part. Helped with my first birth when I was twelve. No doctor, no painkillers, no one to call if things went wrong, just my mom and me to help her. That one went all right. Mother and child survived. Others didn't. I always thought of America as the most wonderful place in the world because women didn't die in childbirth and their kids lived too.

a.cricket

[Pistias]

your wife

Suppose not ;)

The highest part of your soul will always rise if that is what you want.

Yes and no. A prodigious effort can overcome the effect of a corrupt regime on the individual soul, but by and large prodigious efforts become more rare in our kind of democratic republic simply because of the ease of life. And that ease can enervate the soul so that it won't want to rise.

because women didn't die in childbirth and their kids lived too

It is a lot better on the family, that is for sure.

[Don Joe]

"Was that common? I know the Spartans did that, but I've never heard of a tribe that did. I have heard of Hopi that had cripples live to fifty, and an Australian aboriginal tribe that carried a legless woman for her entire life."

I read something maybe 25 or 30 years ago, I think it was in National Geographic, about a tribe somewhere (Borneo? South America? Can't remember!), where the tradition was that when you reached a certain age, your son would carry you out into the woods and leave you there to die.

In the article, the writer saw this happen, and he tried reasoning with this guy who had his dad sitting on his shoulders, being carried out of the camp for his death trip. He pleaded with the guy not to kill his father, using "western logic" (for lack of a better term) on him. He said stuff like hey, he's your father, he raised you, he provided for you, he protected you, it's not right for you to cart in out to the woods and leave him to die!

The guy, after hearing this, agreed! He turned around, and put his dad down.

But then the other tribesmen saw this, and started ridiculing him and laughing at him. At that point, he picked his father back up, gave the American writer a dirty look (as if to say "you idiot, how could I have been so stupid as to listen to your twaddle!"), and carted the old man out to die.

The old man, of course, never protested in the least.

There are strange, sad, even disgusting things that happen in this world. Humans are capable of some pretty nasty stuff -- and, doing so with no guilt whatsoever. Witness the atrocities committed in "the most civilized nation on earth" a half century ago.

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't know if it was common, but it was certainly not unheard of.

[another cricket]

A prodigious effort can overcome the effect of a corrupt regime on the individual soul, but by and large prodigious efforts become more rare in our kind of democratic republic simply because of the ease of life. And that ease can enervate the soul so that it won't want to rise.

If easy corrupts then cruelty corrupts much faster and is more deadly to those around you. You would be trained to kill from a young age. You would torture captured enemies to death maybe over two or three days. It would be your job to keep the slaves in line and I know of no tribe that did not take slaves. You would have to punish those of your own tribe who expressed individuality because it endangered the tribe.

How long before you came to enjoy the screams and the pain? How long before you lost your soul and became cruel not from necessity but for your pleasure?

Corruption is with us always. Life is choice. But if you can't withstand ease you would fall quickly before cruelty.

"If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?”

a.cricket

[Pistias]

if you can't withstand ease you would fall quickly before cruelty

I disagree. Sometimes the easy road is more dangerous--a moment of revelation is, I should think, more likely standing over the body of a dead squaw than sitting in a cubicle.

[another cricket]

Maybe. Personally doubt it as once people get a taste of it they learn to justify it to themselves. But even if so, at that point someone is dead. Someone else just paid a high price for your revelation.

How do you balance the scales on something like that in your own heart and soul?

a.cricket

[Pistias]

Well, if the God of Abraham is in the equation, then that high price is really not that high, if the victim's soul was in order. But yes, I know what you mean about the taste for violence. But I think a parallel could be seen in a comparison of a heroin addict and a fanatical bridge player.

Sure, the heroin addict ruins his life; but by that very fact he may come to see his own penury. If bridge can come between a person and the duty of that person to God, then the effect is the same, no? And the bridge player might be in far worse trouble, because after all, "it's just a night with the ladies from the Club," isn't it?

[another cricket]

Well, if the God of Abraham is in the equation, then that high price is really not that high, if the victim's soul was in order.

And if not? And this price is still too high. Higher for the slaying of the innocent then the guilty. Would you be able to face it? Or would you rationalize it to yourself and thereby slip deeper into the pit.

Monsters are not born but self created bit by bit.

(How on earth did we end up here?)

a.cricket

[Pistias]

And this price is still too high

If it leads to a repentance that will save the killer?

LOL, no clue how we came so far afield.

[MARTIAL MONK]

The effects of culture are subtle but omnipresent. I have been around Indians all of my life and it is difficult to discern the familiar. I have farmed with Cherokee, drank with Souix, hunted with Apache and ridden with Navajo. Most are, at best, an ungainly fit in cubicleland. Put them in the back country, though, and they fit seemlessly with the ages. I am, or I was, a very good tracker. I could match them with skills but they made it seem easy. They did effortlessly what I had to work hard at. They are five generations away from the necessity but the culture that developed to foster the skills still fosters them.

I do not share your enamorment with Indian culture. The people who we now refer to as "raiders" and "warriors" were nothing more than brutes who would bash your brains out with a rock, cut your pecker off and stuff it in your mouth or torture you for hours with fire. Look what happens on FR when some moron barbecues a cat. Yet we ideolize a people who did a thousand times worse with human beings.

Still, Indian culture is distinct and at some time in the future our society may find a need for their cultural attributes. Indian kids run much freer than our suburban
kids. (This is a characteristic which draws every scumbag pedofile to reservation schools.) There is a certain charming naivete to their Huckleberry Finn upbringing but someday we may find a need for these kind of people to compensate for our cultural lapses. They can improvise and think and act independently where our kids can't. If they can find that niche then Indian culture will survive and thrive in our world. If they can't find that niche, Indian culture is a dead end street.

[texasbluebell]

Thanks for this reminder of that book...I need to go look for it now, among all the books I have kept over time...its worth a reread...

Yes, my copy is an old one one too, that I was lucky to get in some second hand book store years ago. I have it sitting out where I can often just look at the cover as I'm walking by, and it reminds me again of what a remarkable story it is. I love the old photos in it, and sometimes wonder what Ishi thought of it all.

[another cricket]

If it leads to a repentance that will save the killer?

Saving would be God's business not mine, as would the judging of the soul. I still would personally consider the price too high even if there was repentance. But I do not see repentance happening. If the person killed was a slave they would not have been considered human in the first place. So why repent? The thought would not have crossed your mind.

If they were a member of the tribe then you would not have time, most likely, to repent because you would be considered a danger to the tribe and you would be quickly removed.

Remember you are still thinking as Westerner would and not as a hunter gather would.

Careful that you don’t end up like Miniver Cheevy.

a.cricket

[Pistias]

They can improvise and think and act independently where our kids can't

Exactly. And given the choice, there's something in me that would rather be a capable savage than a civilized slave.

[Pistias]

Miniver Cheevy

?