While adults of both sexes among all Indians wear either a skirt or a gee-string, there is not the slightest hesitancy in allowing the young, both boys and girls, to run about in a state of nudity. Since we have sent white teachers and missionaries to the Indians, they are beginning to learn that somehow—though they can’t sort it out just how or why—there is something indecent in allowing nude children to wander about their homes and villages. They are being taught to be “ashamed,”—their children are becoming sex-conscious as are our white children, long before their time, and we are foisting on to them our hateful, impure, and blasphemous conceptions of nudity. For myself I am free to confess that I have no sympathy with this kind of teaching. I think it unnecessary, and not only unnecessary but a positive injury. I believe in the sanctity of nudity, especially in that of young children, and while with our present social customs we cannot allow our children to be nude or partially nude in public, I would that our minds were as clean in this matter as are those of the Indians with whom I have so long been acquainted. Whatever society may demand of us in public, there is no reason why, in private, both our children and ourselves should not spend a certain portion of every day, if possible, in contact with the direct rays of the sun and the air. Every school in the land should be so equipped, and our children and their parents be so We have for so long trained ourselves to the half expressed belief that there is something wrong about nudity that we find women’s clubs draping statues, and organizations rejecting figures because they are nude, which all ages and all civilized peoples have accepted as pure and chaste works of art. I would not for a moment have it thought that I approve of all nude statues or pictures. Many of them have no virtue to commend them. Yet I would not indiscriminately condemn all works of art in the nude merely because they are nude. We have forgotten the appearance of a healthy body, and feel ashamed to see one. By our mental attitude we accuse the Creator of indecency that “male and female created He them,” for, not only do we veil the bodies of the opposite sexes from each other, (which is a perfectly correct and wise thing to do) but daughters are ashamed to be seen nude by their own mothers, and mothers by their daughters. I believe in the sanctity of nudity. Let the sexes remain apart, Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, and many others of the great men of the world, made it a daily practice to expose their bodies to the sun and the air. When I first visited the Havasupai Indians, all the men were nude, part of the time, save for the breech-clout. In their dances, in some of which I participated, it was a delight to see the movements of their perfect muscles, their bronze flesh glistening in the sun, or in the glow of the camp fires. And men, women, and children all bathed at the same time, in the clear waters of Havasu Creek, all the adults, of course, wearing either a short skirt or a breech clout, but the major part of the body fully exposed. There was no immodesty and no thought of anything of the kind. Nudity or semi-nudity was taken as a matter of course, and neither by word or deed did anyone seem conscious of it. After vigorous swimming, the young men wrestled, the youngsters ran races, the men indulged in various games, their bodies still exposed to the sun and the air, and no one could fail to observe the health, vigor, and robustness that came from this habit of life. The Hopis train their boys and young men to their morning runs over the desert in a state of almost complete nudity, and in their snake dance races, nothing but the gee-string is worn, and people of both In many of the leading sanitariums of the world the patients are required to expose their bodies to the sun and air for a certain length of time daily. Here is a struggling to get back to a natural condition, an almost essential condition to the attainment and retention of perfect health. Of the outdoor gymnasiums for men and women at the Boulder “Here the men patients, clothed with simple trunks, bask in the sunshine on the sand which covers the ground, follow the trainer through the different lines of gymnastic work, finally plunging into the pool and coming out ready to be dried and thoroughly rubbed. Donning their simple apparel, they can, if they choose, proceed up the mountain, and gather beautiful wild flowers and rest the eye on the surrounding scenery. “The outdoor gymnasium is especially helpful in the treatment of women. It is very difficult to get them to dress properly when taking physical exercise, and they are ‘so afraid’ of exposing themselves to the sunlight and ‘ruining’ their complexion. But the beautiful physique of some of our young women who have trained in this line, and the assurance that they can so develop themselves, lead them to make short trips to the gymnasium, and gradually they grow willing to be delivered from close wrappings, and expose themselves to the sunlight. The pleasure is enticing; enjoyment of exercise in this place without the restriction of tight clothing rapidly increases, and desired results are obtained by this means in less time than in any other line of training. The great essential is to have the person in natural condition when exercising, so that all the organs of the body may move freely and naturally, without let or hindrance. Number seems to increase the enchantment; hence the more readily do the timid and backward take the first steps. “At first it is impossible for many to expand at the waist line; but a jump into the pool, the temperature of the water being 70° to 75°, causes them involuntarily to inflate the respiratory organs, and through this and “We aim to have our patients spend at least one hour, twice a day (forenoon and afternoon), in the open-air gymnasium. “Soon after beginning this course, the patient’s skin, and mind as well, will be found clearing up. He will say his appetite is better, and that he sleeps more soundly, and is gaining weight and strength. The surface becomes brown in a short time, but as soon as pigmentation ceases, there is a natural, pearly-white hue—a sure indicator of health.” These open-air gymnasiums are to be found at the leading sanitariums of the world, thus clearly showing that the Indian idea of nudity has the sanction of the highest and wisest medical opinions of the white race. The body is a sweet, a precious, a beautiful expression of God’s thought; it was and is intended by the Divine as the house of the mind, the soul, the immortal part of the human being. Paul expressly declares it is “the temple of the Holy Ghost.” Every part of it is beautiful, every part God-given. In health it is the most perfect machine ever designed, and the most beautiful. Every function it performs is a marvel, every power contained within it a miracle. How obviously wrong then is anything that disparages, lowers, offends the high and supreme dignity of this glorious structure. Yet we are ashamed of it, we apologize for it, we teach our children to be ashamed of it and to cover it as an evil thing. |