As a part of his out-of-door life the Indian is a great walker and runner, having horses he is a great rider, and living in a mountainous or canyon region he is a great climber. The Indian walks through necessity, and also through delight and joy. He knows to the full “the joy of mere living.” A few miles’ walk, more or less, is nothing to him, and he does it so easily that one can see he enjoys it. In one of my books1 I tell the story of the running powers of the Hopi Indians of northern Arizona. It is worth quoting here:

“It is no uncommon thing for an Oraibi or Mashonganavi to run from his home to Moenkopi, a distance of forty miles, over the hot blazing sands of a real American Sahara, there hoe his corn-field, and return to his home, within twenty-four hours. I once photographed, the morning after his return, an old man who had made this eighty-mile run, and he showed not the slightest trace of fatigue.

“For a dollar I have several times engaged a young man to take a message from Oraibi to Keam’s Canyon, a distance of seventy-two miles, and he has run on foot the whole distance, delivered his message, and brought me an answer within thirty-six hours.

“One Oraibi, Ku-wa-wen-ti-wa, ran from Oraibi to Moenkopi, thence to Walpi, and back to Oraibi, a distance of over ninety miles, in one day.”

I doubt not that most of my readers suppose that these experiences are rare and unusual, and come after special training. Not at all! They are regular occurrences, made without any thought that the white man was either watching or recording. When asked for the facts, the Indians gave them as simply and as unconcernedly as we might tell of a friend met or a dinner eaten. And it is not with one tribe alone. I have found the same endurance with Yumas, Pimas, Apaches, Navahos, Havasupais, Wallapais, Chemehuevis, Utes, Paiutis, and Mohaves. Indeed, on the trackless wastes of the Colorado desert the Mohaves and Yumas perhaps show a greater endurance than any people I have ever seen.

As a horseback-rider the Indian can teach many things to the white race. Among the Navahos and Hopis, the Havasupais and Wallapais, the Pimas and Apaches, most of the children are taught to ride at an early age. They can catch, bridle, and saddle their own horses while they are still “little tots,” and the way they ride is almost a marvel. There need be no wonder at this, for their mothers are as used to horseback-riding as they are. Many an Indian child has come near to being born on horseback. They ride up and down trails, over the plains and up the mountains. They go with their parents gathering the seeds and pinion nuts, and are also taught to handle their horses in the chase. They study “horse-nature,” and early become expert horse-breakers. While their animals are broncos and wild, and therefore are never as well “broken” as are ours, they compel them to every duty, and ride them fearlessly and constantly.

The girls and women, too, ride almost as much as the boys and men, and always astride. If anything were needed to demonstrate to an Indian woman the inferiority of a white woman it would be that she sits on a side-saddle. The utter unnaturalness and folly of such a posture is so incomprehensible to the Indian mind that she “throws up her hands,” figuratively speaking, and gives up the problem of solving the peculiar mentality of her white sister. And I don’t wonder! Thank God the day is passing when women are ashamed of having legs, or of placing one of them on one side and the other on the other side of a horse. Common sense and comfort will ultimately prevail, and place the most modest, refined, cultured, and womenly women upon the backs of their horses cavalier fashion, dressed in trousers. The idea that men should dictate to women what they should do to be womanly is so absurd as to make even fools laugh. What does a man know as to what is womanly? Women alone can determine that question, just as men alone must determine what is manly. So I am satisfied that I shall live to see womenly women—the best the world has—reasonably natural in their dress on horseback, and riding as the Creator evidently intended them to do.

If girls as well as boys of the white race were to ride horseback more, much disease would flee away. Liver and stomach troubles are shaken out of existence on horseback; the blue devils and constipation are almost an impossibility, and the exhilaration of the swift motion and the vivifying influence of the deeper breathing, the shaking up of the muscles and nerves, the quickening effect of the accelerated heart action, and the readier circulation of well-oxygenated blood make the whole body a-tingle with a newness of life that is glorious. If I were well to do and had a score of children their chief education should be out of doors, and rain or shine, storm or calm, snow or sleet, winter or summer, boys and girls alike should ride horseback ten to twenty miles or more each day.

Nor should this do away with daily walking. Walking is a fine offset to riding. One needs to walk a good deal to enjoy riding a good deal. One is a necessary complement to the other. One exercise uses muscles that are little called upon by the other. So I would make good walkers, in all weathers, of all boys, girls, men, and women of the white race, even as are those of the Indian race. In order to be good walkers the Indians have naturally found the most perfect and natural attitude for walking. Every Indian walks upright, his abdomen in, chest up, chin down, and spinal column easily carrying his body and arms. The white race may well learn from the Indian how to keep the spinal column upright, how to have a graceful carriage in walking, and how to cure stooped shoulders. With all younger women and men of all ages among the Indians a curved spine, ungraceful walk, and stooped shoulders are practically unknown. The women produce this result by carrying burdens upon their heads.

Yes, and the boys and men as well carry burdens also upon the head, though not as much as the women. Burden carrying upon the head is a good thing. As one writer has well said:

“Most of us are accustomed to regard the head as a mere thinking machine, unconscious of the fact that this bony superstructure seems to have been specially adapted by Nature to the carrying of heavy weights.

“The arms are usually considered as the means intended for the bearing of burdens, but the effect of carrying heavy articles in the hands or on the arms is very injurious, and altogether destructive of an erect or graceful carriage. The shoulders are dragged forward, the back loses its natural curve, the lungs are compressed, and internal organs displaced.

“When the head bears the weight of the burden, as it is made to do among the peasant women of Italy, Mexico, and Spain, and the people of the Far East, there is great gain in both health and beauty. The muscles of the neck are strengthened, the spine held erect, the chest raised and expanded, so that breathing is full and deep, and the shoulders are held back in their natural position.

“It is a good thing for children to be early accustomed to the carrying of various articles, gradually increasing in weight, balanced upon the head. In this way they may acquire an erect carriage, and free and graceful walk.”

The Indian man and woman will pick up an olla of water, containing a gallon or more, and swinging it easily to the top of the head will walk along with hands by their sides, as unconcernedly as if they carried no fragile bowl balanced and ready to fall at the slightest provocation. And they will climb up steep and difficult trails, still balancing the jar upon the head. The effect of this is to compel a natural and dignified carriage. I know Navaho, Hopi, and Havasupai women who walk with a simple dignity that is not surpassed in drawing-room of president or king.

Then, too, another reason for this dignified, healthfully erect carriage is found in the fact that neither men nor women wear high-heeled shoes. The moccasin is always flat, and therefore the foot of the Indian rests firmly and securely upon the floor. No doubt if the Indian woman wished to imitate the forward motion of the kangaroo, or any other frivolous creature, she could tilt herself in an unnatural and absurd position by high-heeled shoes, but in all my twenty-five years of association with them I never found one foolish enough to do so.

The men, as well as the women, gain this upright attitude as the result of “holding up their vital organs” when they go for their long hunting and other tramps. It seems to me that fully one-half the white men (and women) we meet on the streets are suffering from prolapsus of the transverse colon. This is evidenced by the projection of the abdomen, which generally grows larger as they grow older; so that we have “tailors for fat men,” and special implements of torture for compressing into what we call a decent shape the embonpoint of women. But, I ask, as I see the Indians, why do white people have this paunch?

An Indian with a “bay-window” stomach, a paunch, is seldom, if ever seen. Why? He has long ago learned the art, the necessity, of keeping his abdominal muscles stretched tight. His belly is always held in. The muscles across his abdomen are like steel. The result is the transverse colon is held securely in position. It has no prolapse, hence there is no paunch. If we taught ourselves, as the Indian does, to draw in the abdomen and at the same time breathe long and deep, this prolapsus would be practically impossible. Half the medicine that is sold to so-called “kidney sufferers” is sold to people whose kidneys are no more diseased than are those of the man in the moon. It is the pulling and tugging of the falling colon that causes the wearisome backache; and the lying and scoundrelous wretches who prey upon the ignorant write out their catch-penny advertisements describing these feelings, so that when the sufferer picks up their literature he is as good as entrapped for “a dozen or more bottles,” or until his money gives out.

O men and women of America, learn to walk upright, as God intended you should. Do not become “chesty” by throwing out your chest, and throwing your shoulders back at the expense of your spine, but pull in the muscles of your abdomen, fill your lungs with air, then pull your chin down and in, and you will soon have three great, grand, and glorious blessings; viz., a dignified, upright carriage; freedom from and reasonable assurance that you will never have prolapsus of the transverse colon and its attendant miseries and backache; and a lung capacity that will help you withstand the approaches of disease should you ever, in some other way, come under its malign influence.

When I see white boys slouching and shambling along the streets I wish with a great wish that I could have them put under the training of some of my wild Indian friends. They would soon brace up; heads would be held erect, chins down, abdomen in, chest up, and with lips closed, and the pure air of the mountain, canyon, plain, desert, or forest entering their lungs through the nostrils; the whole aspect of life would begin to change. For “nothing lifts up the spirits so much as just to lift the chest up. It takes a load off the head, off the mind, off the heart. Raise your chest so high that the abdominal organs perform their functions in a proper way. When one is all doubled over, the head and spine are deprived of blood that they are entitled to. When the chest is lifted up, the abdominal organs are compressed, and the blood that has been retired from the circulation and accumulated in the liver and the stomach is forced back into the current where it belongs. The head and spinal cord get their proper supply of blood, and one feels refreshed and energized immediately.”

But in addition to their walking and riding the Indians are great climbers of steep canyon and mountain trails. Men, women, and children alike pass up and down these trails with almost the ease and agility of the goat. I have seen a woman with a kathak (carrying basket) suspended from her forehead containing a load of fruit, of pine nuts, of grass seeds, weighing not less than from 50 to 100 lbs., her baby perched on top of the load, steadily and easily climb a trail that made me puff and blow like a grampus. Few exercises, properly taken, are of greater benefit to the lungs and heart, and indeed, all the vital organs, than is trail or mountain climbing. See that your clothing is easy, especially around the waist, for there must be room for every effort of lung expansion. This applies to men as well as to women, for the wretched and injurious habit is growing among men of wearing a belt instead of suspenders. If the prospective climber is a woman, let her wear a loose, light dress, and with as short a skirt as her common sense, judgment, and conscience will allow her to wear. If she is out “in the wilds,” let her wear trousers and discard skirts entirely as a senseless and barbarous slavery to custom and convention. Shoes should be easy and comfortable, with thick soles and broad, low heels.

Begin to climb as early in the morning as possible. Don’t try to do too much at first. Try a small hill. Conquer that by degrees. Get so that you can finally go up and down without any great effort. Then tackle the higher hills, and finally try real mountains, eight, ten, fourteen thousand feet high. If you are delicate to begin with be more careful still, and ask the advice of your physician, but don’t be afraid so long as you do not get fatigued to exhaustion. For climbing develops the thighs and calves of the leg, the muscles of the back, enlarges the lungs, makes the heart pump more and purer (because better oxygenated) blood throughout the whole body, brings about more rapid changes in the material of the body, and thus exchanges old and useless tissue for new and healthy, dissolves and dissipates fat, induces perspiration and exhalations through the kidneys that are peculiarly beneficial.

In breathing be sure to keep the mouth closed. Insist upon nasal breathing, and the exercise will perforce make it deep breathing. The deeper you breathe the more good you will get from it. Let the posture be correct or you will lose much good. This is in brief: pull the abdomen in, raise the chest, keep the chin down, and let the arms hang easily and naturally by the side.

For years I have compelled myself to seize every possible opportunity for trail climbing or descending. Hundreds of miles of trails have I gone up and down in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, often with a thirty, forty, fifty pound camera and food supplies on my back. I have ascended scores of mountains throughout the Southwest, and the rich experiences of glowing health and vigor, vim, snap, tingle, that come from such exercises no one can know but those who have enjoyed them.

A few weeks ago I came to the Grand Canyon (September, 1907), after nearly a year of rest from physical labor on an extended scale (my civilized occupations had pre-empted all my time). I started out on the trail, up and down Havasu Canyon, Bass Trail of the Grand Canyon, and the Grand View and Red Canyon trails. Again and again I walked up the steepest portions for a mile at a time, setting the pace for the horses and mules, and it was a source of mental as well as physical delight that my lungs, heart, and body generally were in such good condition that I could do this day after day for two weeks, not only without exhaustion, but with positive exhilaration and physical delight.