In the preceding chapter I have given the Indian’s life, habit, thought, towards physical labor for himself and his sons. He holds the same attitude toward it for his daughter and his wife. And not only does he so hold it, but the wife and daughter regard it in exactly the same way. The out-door life of the Indian girl and woman makes her healthy, vigorous, muscular, and strong. She glories in her physical vigor and strength, and wonders why her white sister is not equal to her in physical capacity. When I tell her that the white women pity her because, forsooth, “she has to do so much hard work, while the lazy men sit by, smoking, and doing nothing,” she looks at me in vacant amazement. Once when I was talking in this way one of them said: “Are your white women all fools? Tell them we not only don’t need their pity, but we despise them for their habits of life that lead them to pity us. The Creator made us with the capacity and power for work. He knows that all beings must work if they would be healthy. We would be healthy, and therefore we do His will in working at our appointed tasks. We are glad and proud to do them. And as for the men: let them dare to interfere in our work and they will soon see what they will see. We brook no interference or help from them.”

So their children (girls as well as boys) are all brought up from the earliest years to work, and to work hard. Boys are sent out to herd sheep, horses, and cattle; to watch the corn and see that nothing disturbs it. And the girls, as soon as they can toddle, become “little mothers” to their younger brothers and sisters. As they grow older they grind all the corn, gather all the wild grass and other seeds, make all the basketry and pottery, and prepare all the food for the household. To grind corn in the Indian fashion, with flat rock and metate, is no easy task for a strong man of the white race, yet I have known a girl of fifteen to keep at work at the metate for ten hours a day for several days in succession, in order that there might be plenty of flour when guests came to the Snake Dance.

On one of my visits to the Hopi village of Oraibi I found the women at work building a house. This is their occupation. All labor among Hopis is divided between the sexes in accordance with long-established custom, and I think it is so divided in all aboriginal peoples. The men undertook the protection of the home (were the warriors) and the hunting of animals for food. They also make the robes and moccasins. Those tribes that lost their nomad character and became sedentary added care of the fields and the stock to the work of their men. The women practically undertook all the rest. The building of the home, its care, the general gathering of seeds, and the preparation of all foods belong to them.

And as a rule, they do their chosen or appointed or hereditary work cheerfully. They know nothing of the aches and pains of their weaker white sisters; they are as strong as men, so they have no fear of physical labor. Not only this, but they enjoy it; they go to it with pleasure, as all healthy bodies do. How often have I stood and watched a healthy, vigorous man swing a hammer at the forge, or in a mine or a trench. How easily it was done, how gladly, how unconscious of effort! To the healthy woman, with reasonable strength, labor is also a pleasure. To feel one’s self accomplishing something, and able to do it without undue fatigue or exhaustion, what a delight it is!

The woman who honors us by coming to our house weekly to do the heavy work, often reminds me of a panther. She fairly “leaps” upon her work with an exuberance of strength and spirit that is a perfect delight, in this age of woman’s physical disability and disinclination to do physical labor.

So it is with Indian women. They sing in unison when a dozen of them get together at the grinding-trough; though the work is hard enough, when long continued, to exhaust any strong man. I have seen women kneel and pound acorns all day, lifting a heavy pestle as high as their heads at every stroke. In the case of these women builders at Oraibi: they carried all the heavy rocks and put them in position, mixed their own mortar, and were their own paddies, and in everything, save the placing of the heavy crossbeams for the roof, to handle which they called upon some of the men for aid, they did all the work from beginning to end.

Now, while I do not especially want to see white women building a house, I do wish, with all my heart, that they had the physical strength to do it or similar arduous labor. I do long for the whole of my race that the women and girls shall have such vigorous health and strength that no ordinary labor could tire them.

“But,” say my white friends,—women and girls,—“we don’t want to work physically; there is no need for it; we are not strong enough to do it; we exhaust ourselves, and then do not have energy enough for the other duties of life; we engage servants to do our menial labor for us.”

Indeed! In the first place I want to protest with all the power I have against the word and idea “menial.” There is no menial service. All service, rendered in willing helpfulness and love, is dignified, noble, and ennobling. He or she who accepts service from another with the idea that the service is “menial,” thereby degrades himself, herself, far more than the person is “degraded” by the performance of the service. I would rather have my son a good scavenger, working daily to keep the city pure and clean, than be an “honored” lawyer, engaged in dishonest cases; a “successful” politician, tangled up with graft; a “popular” physician, selfishly deceiving his patients; or an “eloquent” and “dear” minister, self-righteously lauding himself and pouring forth inane platitudes in high-sounding phrases from the pulpit. “Menial service” is divine compared with these occupations when they are demoralized.

And the principle of all I have said applies to girls as well as boys. I would rather that daughters of mine should be able to scrub the floor, bake bread, do the family washing and mending, repair the boys’ clothes, knit, sew, and take care of the kitchen garden and the flowers, than strum “The Battle of Prague” or “The Maiden’s Prayer,” without feeling or expression, on a half-tuned piano. The former occupations are holy and dignified as compared with the sham exhibition of the latter. I like to see a girl with an apron on, strong, healthy, willing, useful, capable, engaged in useful household work, and if our young men had one-tenth part of the sense they ought to have, they would hunt for such girls to become their wives and the mothers of their children, rather than for the dainty, white-faced, wasp-waisted, finger-manicured dolls who are useful for no other purpose than to be looked at.

I have no desire to make pack-horses or slaves of intelligent women or girls, but I cannot help asking the question of them: “Which would you rather be, strong enough to do any and all so-called menial and laborious service, and endowed with perfect health, or be weakly and puny and live the life of ease and luxury that most women and girls seem to covet?” And upon the answer to that question should I base my judgment as to the wisdom, intelligence, and fitness for the duties of life of the answerer. There is no dignity in woman superior to the dignity of being able personally (if necessary) to care for all the physical needs of her household; there is no charm greater than the charm of strength combined with gracious, womanly sweetness exercised for the joy of others; there is no refinement greater than the refinement of a gloriously healthy woman radiating physical, mental, spiritual life upon all those who come within the sphere of her influence.