To the materialist immortality is a foolish dream, to the agnostic an unjustified human craving, to the simple Christian a belief, and to the transcendentalist a confident hope, but to the Indian it is as positive an assurance as is life. The white race has complicated its belief in the future life with many theological dogmas. The Roman Catholic church has its purgatory, as well as its paradise and hell; the first as a place of purging for the sins committed in the body and that must be burned away, the second the abode of the blest, and the third the place into which the damned are cast. The Seventh Day Adventists believe that only those who are saved by “the blood of Christ” and obedience to his commands are blessed with the gift of immortal life. They contend it is a free gift as an act of God’s grace and is not inherent in the soul or spirit of mankind. Those who refuse to accept salvation by the vicarious atonement of Christ, they believe, will be annihilated. The Presbyterian believes that a certain number of mankind are foreordained for salvation and heaven, and another number for damnation and hell, from the foundation of the world. The Universalist believes that all men will ultimately be saved and therefore enjoy heaven, whilst others have a belief in a “conditional” immortality.

The Indian believes in immortality without any admixture of complex theological ideas. His is a simple faith which he accepts as he accepts life. He believes that when he dies his spirit goes to its new life just as at birth he came into this life. And he believes that all the objects he used on earth—food, clothing, articles of adornment, baskets, horses, saddles, blankets—have a spirit-life as well as he has. Hence, when one dies, his friends throw upon his funeral pyre his clothing, blankets, and other personal belongings, utensils for his comfort, food for his nourishment on the way to the “under world,” or land of the future, and strangle his horse that its spirit may aid him on his journey. When death approaches he faces it with calmness, equanimity and serenity. Fearless and unafraid he awaits the coming of the last great enemy. In effect, he cries out with Browning:

No shirking for him; as calmly as Socrates took the bowl of fatal hemlock, the Indian awaits death and proudly passes on to the new life. Those who are left behind may wail for their loss, but the one who departs asks for and receives no sympathy.

Now, it is this simple acceptation of death as a natural thing that I would have the white race learn. And yet it can never come to us as an act of simple faith as it is with the Indian. Our civilization has spoiled us for “simple faith.” That is practically impossible, save to a few souls who, unlike the rest of us, have “kept themselves unspotted from the world” of speculative thought, or theological dogma. It can come (and does with many) as the result of religious training, or as it did to Browning and Whitman. What wonderfully different minds these two men had. One an aristocrat, the other a democrat, yet both full of love for mankind, and each teaching with vigor and power the Fatherhood of God, the real brotherhood of man, and the immortality of the soul. Read Browning’s Prospice, part of which I have already quoted, Evelyn Hope, Abt Vogler, and these three stanzas with which he opens his La Saziaz, and elsewhere calls a Pisgah Sight:

Compare these utterances with Whitman’s rugged and forceful words:

Again, in his To One Shortly to Die, what a triumphant note is in the last two lines:

How perfectly Indian, this attitude, this refusal to be sorry, and to offer congratulations rather than regrets. In his Night on the Prairies his perfect assurance as to the future is clearly expressed, and while measuring himself with the great thoughts of space and eternity that fill him as he gazes upon the myriads of globes above, he exclaims:

In one poem he speaks of “awaiting death with perfect equanimity,” and in another says:

And the reason for all this restfulness as to Death and the Future is expressed in his Assurances:

“I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for. (Did you think life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all life, is not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points.

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere, at any time, is provided for in the inherences of things.

I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.”

So, reader, I care not how it comes into your soul, so that you have it there, a rich and precious possession, this living, active, potential belief in immortality. If you know you are now, and that you will never end, you will find that life itself becomes more enlarged and dignified. You will not be content with mere earthly aims, you will not rest satisfied to be a mere money-getter, but, realizing the immensity of your own capacities and powers, you will reach out for the eternal things, the realities that abide forever. For Joaquin Miller never wrote a truer word than when he said:

This forever settles a thoughtful man’s conception of mere acquisitiveness. Such gatherings-together are unworthy the soul that feels and knows its own immortality. It needs a larger aim, a more worthy object.

Another thing in connection with what we call death, the white race may well learn from the Indian. How often does press and pulpit expend itself in finding superlatives to pour out in lavish eulogy over the dead, who, while alive, never did a thing to win the love of their fellows. Such eulogy is unknown among the Indians. The “preacher of an Indian funeral sermon” would no more dare wrongfully praise or laud his subject than he would falsely execrate him. He must speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and while he is not called upon to expatiate upon the wrong-doings, the foibles or weaknesses of his subject, he must say no word of praise that is not justly earned and strictly true.

If this law were applied to the white race, what different funeral sermons and orations we should hear and read; and what different inscriptions we should read upon the tombstones found in our grave-yards.