# Journal of American Folk-Lore/Volume 12/Issue 44/The Study of Ethics among the Lower Races

THE STUDY OF ETHICS AMONG THE LOWER RACES.
A reviewer, Mr. Henry Sturt, in the "International Journal of Ethics" (October, 1898), declares that "the historian of morality has in fact not yet appeared before the world, and a most magnificent literary and philosophic opportunity still remains unseized." Regarding this as the latest dictum on the subject, I have reason to hope that the few suggestions and observations I am about to present are not untimely.
I have heard a tale, but I know not where it originated, of an English gentleman who had spent some time among wild tribes in a foreign land, and on returning to his home wrote a book about them. One chapter was headed "Customs and Manners," and consisted simply of these words: "Customs, beastly; manners, none." This represents the mental attitude of the average European toward more primitive people. We are apt to regard our own morals and manners as standards, and to think that those who have them not have none. It is difficult to understand that the virtues of one people may be the crimes of another, and vice versa. Yet such is often the case. We are apt to forget that among ourselves morals may be vastly changed in a single generation, and that what is commendable on the part of the father may be execrated on the part of the son. The history of the duello, for instance, exemplifies this.
But there are many other difficulties to be encountered in the study of savage ethics. It is difficult to determine, where authority is lax or ill-defined, what acts are regarded as criminal. If, as Hobbes says, "the civil magistrate is supreme in morality as well as in politics," how shall we judge standards of morality where there is no civil magistrate? If punishment for neglect is a criterion of right action, what criterion shall we establish among a race which has no organized means of punishment? Adam Smith tells us that ​the criterion of right "is the sympathetic feeling of an impartial and well-informed spectator," but it is not easy to select such a spectator from among a crowd of savages. Writers on ethics have exhausted speculation in their efforts to determine the standard of moral action. If such a standard is hard to find among civilized men, it is much harder to find among the uncivilized. The days of the truly unsophisticated savage have passed, and only a meagre record of them remains. It is not easy now to decide how much the ethical notions of a barbarous people may be the result of civilized teaching, example, or law.
Perhaps the safest way to discover the ethical notions of savages is by the study of their myths and traditions; but even here we must proceed with caution, and employ the critical methods of modern science. Among a civilized people, history and tradition teach us only the ethics of the past; this may be true also of the traditions of savages, but in a lesser degree. With us, tradition has been unalterably fixed in type; among savages, it still lives on the tongues of unlettered men; it is yet in a plastic condition. From my own experience in collecting tales among savages, I am aware that even in stories with well-established forms a good deal depends on the disposition and intelligence of the narrator. He embellishes according to his own ideas. He has the power to add or subtract much. Then we know that oral traditions have their growths. If one Indian tells me that the sun-god rides on a horse through the heavens, and another tells me he walks on the holy trail of a rainbow, I have no hesitancy in deciding which is the ancient tale; but when one seems to condemn a certain course of action and another to approve it, I cannot reach a decision so readily. The age and character of the informant and many other things must be considered.
It is nothing to us that a horrid crime (as we regard it) is described in a tale, for the story-tellers of all ages and of all races have delighted to thrill their hearers with such tales, and, as civilization advances, this delight seems to increase rather than to diminish. But if the beneficent gods of the people are represented as approving of the act, or if the author of the myth approved of it and seemed to expect approval on the part of his auditors, we may fairly conclude the action is deemed proper, no matter how repulsive it may be to our ideas. It is fair to presume, too, that an action which meets with a reward is regarded as virtuous. If we find that not once only, but many times, a certain course of conduct is approved, we may feel still more assured that it is thought righteous.
In this short article, I must confine myself, as a rule, to drawing my illustrations from the sources with which I am most familiar. If ​we find a community of some fifteen thousand people wealthy and prosperous, living harmoniously together, having few quarrels, no murders, and yet no courts of law and no obvious punishments for breach of law, we may feel assured that they have some system of ethics which holds them together and makes them live like a band of brothers. Such are the Navahoes of New Mexico. Among Indian tribes in a lower state of advancement there were executive bands (dog-soldiers or soldier bands, as they were variously called), who had the right to discipline those who violated the customs of the tribe or the orders of the council; but I never learned that such a band existed among the Navahoes.
One would think that among a people possessing much wealth, and, above all, much portable property, like the Navahoes, some rigorous punishment would be meted to the thief; but no punishment exists for him. If found with the stolen property, he is expected to restore it, that is all. It is Bentham who says, "Utility is the basis of morals," but it is hard to see how his law can apply to theft among the Navahoes, for this is a custom (let us call it) which is exceedingly common among them. The majority of the people possess ornaments of silver and other portable wealth; why do these not suppress the stealing among the improvident and impecunious? Perhaps their present customs are a survival of the days, not long past, when, as a people they were very poor and had to steal from other tribes, if steal they must. To take from an enemy has been deemed proper among all races and at all times down to the year of our Lord 1898; but to take by force, stealth, or fraud from one of your own friends or kindred has long been regarded as unethical among Aryans. Let us see whether the Navaho myths approve of theft or condemn it. In the long myth of the blind boy who bore his crippled twin brother on his back, it is related that this miserable pair went among the holy ones of the Chelly canyon to be cured. The gods asked them if they brought with them the jewels and other precious things demanded as sacrifices. The children said, "No, we are poor and have nothing." Then the gods arranged a conspiracy with the twins. The latter went to the Moki towns, let loose plagues among the fields, and demanded and received gifts of the sacrificial treasures, to stay the plague they had themselves created. This was not theft, but a species of fraud worse than theft, not only pardoned but suggested by gods who afterwards received the spoils. Some extenuating circumstances are presented : the Mokis were an alien people and they treated their visitors inhospitably ; but in the myth of Natinesthani or the Self-taught, we find no such attempt at extenuation. In this it is related that the hero of the myth, the prophet, in order to make sacrifices to the gods and ​gain their favor, stole a number of precious articles from his own parents and brother, or induced his niece to steal them, and thereafter good fortune attends him as a reward for this action. I might cite other similar instances from the Navaho myths. In these days of increasing wealth, the Navahoes may look with disfavor on the thief ; but the time is evidently not long gone by when with them, as among the Spartans, adroit theft was deemed honorable.
Although the Indians have a system of kinship so different to ours, they have a regard for the sacredness of kinship equal or superior to ours. If a man marries within the forbidden degrees of kindred, there is perhaps no worse real punishment for him than social ostracism. As I shall explain later, there are imaginary punishments which in all probability will never come to him. Formal and recognized marriage within forbidden degrees of kindred is perhaps unknown among the Navahoes. The book of Genesis leaves us to infer that consanguineous marriages took place among the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, but the Navaho Origin Legend provides the children of First Man and First Woman with exogamous wives and husbands.
Clandestine intimacies among the closely related are apparently not altogether unknown; but the traditions leave us in no doubt that such intimacies, if unpunished, are yet execrated. The Navaho story of the Origin of the Utes is much like the Hebrew tradition of the origin of the Moabites, but the Navaho shows a delicacy above that of the Hebrew by making the father the willing transgressor and the daughter the innocent victim. When her son is born, she feels no maternal regard for him, but kicks him into a badger-hole and leaves him to his fate. The Navaho scores a point against his enemy, the Ute, just as the Hebrew scores one against his enemy of Moab, by tracing the ancestry of the Ute to this unfortunate child. In the myth of Natinesthani it is indicated that only witches and cannibals are guilty of incest.
Marriage and divorce are both so readily effected among Navahoes that one might easily suppose such a thing as illegitimacy was not recognized among them, or that, if recognized, no stigma could attach to the condition; yet the Navahoes have a word (yutaski) for this state, and the myths indicate that the child who knows not his father is regarded as unfortunate. Except perhaps occasionally a slight whipping, I do not think any punishment falls to the lot of the unfaithful wife. The position of the Navaho woman is one of great independence. In the Navaho Origin Legend it is indicated that severe punishments (such as amputation of the nose) for conjugal infidelity once existed, that they have been abandoned, that the execution of these lay with the husband, but that he might not ​punish without the consent of the woman's relatives. There was no punishment for the erring man.
Truthfulness is not inculcated in the Navaho myths, and there is a general impression that it is a virtue not much practised among savages. As the result of over thirty years' experience among Indians, I must say that I have not found them less truthful than the average of our own race. With a proper understanding of their motives and actions I know how to rely on their statements and promises. I have evidence that after a solemn asseveration or oath a Navaho will not lie, and I have known men of high character and self-respect among the Navahoes whose word could always be safely accepted. All people, in all times, have found it convenient to condone a certain amount of falsehood. The ethical boundaries of veracity have never been exactly defined. There are times when falsehood seems commendable, especially diplomatic falsehood. If we read in the Odyssey that Pallas Athene applauded Ulysses when he lied to her; if we learn in Exodus that it was not Moses who devised the scheme to deceive and defraud the Egyptians; if we are ready ourselves to pardon the social falsehoods of every-day life, we need not be shocked when we find the Navaho myths teeming with falsehoods on the part of both gods and men. There is this much to be said in favor of the Navaho myths: for the most part they speak of diplomatic lies, and they make it appear that when the questioner expresses doubt by asking his question four times, all prevarication and evasion ceases and the truth is spoken. But the myths indicate that a solemn promise is of a very sacred character, and that the person who makes such a promise—one of secrecy for instance—should be willing to die rather than violate it.
I was much surprised many years ago when I first realized that savages often regard our customs as beastly and think we have no manners; but when I learned their reasons, I found the latter were not without foundation. Many of our tribes will not eat pork. At Zuñi the hogs of the village are reserved to feast the captive eagles. The flesh is not tabooed by any divine order, as among the Hebrews. They say they will not eat the flesh of the hog simply because the animal is filthy in its habits, because it is the scavenger of the town. They cannot comprehend why white people eat pork, and yet they eat food that would disgust us. It is all a matter of taste. The wildest Indian would be shocked to learn that it is very common in England for first cousins to marry one another, yet he would consider it a virtuous act to marry his deceased wife's sister.
The Indian, in a state of pure paganism, does not believe in that doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life which is undoubtedly an incentive to righteousness among our people. His ​religion carries the conditions of this life into the next. As already-stated of the Navahoes,—and it is also true of other tribes,—there is no executive power to enforce obedience to laws or to punish offenders. I have heard of men being killed in old days for the supposed crime of witchcraft among the Navahoes (this has been done in Zuñi of late years); but such executions were rare and seem to have been accomplished by popular uprising rather than by an established legal method, by a species of lynch law, in fact. Of the punishment of adultery I speak elsewhere. What, then, it is proper to ask, are the Indian incentives to right doing? No doubt loss of favor for wrong-doing is one incentive; but we know how lightly this weighs on many of our own race who are not of the proud and sensitive kind. I am inclined to think that a belief in bad luck, or, as we might say, in the vengeance of inanimate objects (not so inanimate to the Indian mind as to ours), has a restraining influence. We know how superstition guides action among the unlettered of our own people, and we know that among the most cultured a trace of its influence remains. I once asked a Navaho what would happen to him if he married a woman of his own gens. "I would have bad fortune," he said. "I would fall into the fire and get burned, the lightning would strike me, the cold would freeze me, or the gun would shoot me,—something fearful would happen to me." In the Navaho Origin Legend we are told that when Nohoilpi the gambler, or gambling god, had been deprived of his possessions and shot up into the sky by his conqueror, he cursed the people as he ascended; but he did not utter anything like the brief convenient anathema of the Anglo-American. He did not think that his beneficent gods had either the power or the will to damn anyone. He knew of no process analogous to damning. He only said; "I will send war and disease among you. May the cold freeze you! May the fire burn you! May the waters drown you!"
But there is yet another restraining influence with the Navaho, and, strange as it may appear to some of my readers, it is his conscience. There has been so much written on the general subject of conscience that there is little left for me to say. I am not one of those who believe that it can always help us to determine right from wrong. I do not believe with Dr. Whewell in the existence of a standard conscience; but I do believe that the rules of right and wrong being once established in the mind, the conscience constrains us to comply with them. The oftener we suffer the pangs of remorse, the more we dread their repetition. As conscience is a sentiment that varies in different individuals, we have different degrees of virtue even among those to whom the same law is given. It is not always for offences to which established penalties here or here​after are attached that we feel the deepest remorse; but often for those which merit no punishment and are concealed in our own bosoms from the eye of scorn. The asseveration of Torlino, which I have already published elsewhere, is one of the best evidences I possess of the recognition of conscience in the Indian. Desiring to assure me of the verity of what he was about to relate, he said: "Why should I lie to you? I am ashamed before the earth; I am ashamed before the heavens; I am ashamed before the dawn; I am ashamed before the evening twilight; I am ashamed before the blue sky; I am ashamed before the darkness; I am ashamed before the sun; I am ashamed before that standing within me which speaks with me. Some of these things are always looking at me. I am never out of sight. Therefore I must tell the truth. That is why I always tell the truth. I hold my word tight to my breast." Here we have in the eternal vigilance of many mysterious eyes a substitute for the All-seeing Eye and a distinct conception of the inward monitor. Torlino was a pagan priest of the old school. A passage in the story of Nohoilpi, the gambler or gambling god, shows us that he who composed this tale knew what the pangs of remorse might be, even for an act not criminal, as we consider it, but merely ungenerous and unfilial. Nohoilpi had won at game, from the people of the Blue House in the Chaco cañyon, two shells of enormous size, the chief treasures of the pueblo. His father the Sun had asked him for these shells and had been refused the gift; the Sun was angry, and certain gods plotted the overthrow of the gambler. But before they began to work they wanted to find out if he was sorry because he had refused the shells to his father. So at night they sent first Darkness, and after him Wind, to the chamber where the gambler slept, to search well his body and his mind. Both returned saying that Nohoilpi was sorry for what he had done.
Let us now inquire if the good actions of Indians are ever prompted by pure feelings of benevolence. Perhaps there is no such thing as pure benevolence, and that in its highest manifestations good-will is but a refined form of selfishness. However this may be, we flatter ourselves that we often do good to our fellow creatures for no other reward than the pleasure it gives us to do it, and, unless we have good evidence to the contrary, it is but fair to believe that the savage acts at times from motives similar to ours. In the Navaho myths we frequently find allusions to gods helping men in all sorts of trouble. For certain specific services, such as teaching him songs and rites, they demand sacrifices—mostly of an innocent and inexpensive sort; but numerous services are performed without any hope of reward. The myths abound in instances of this kind. The gods are shown to help man merely because they take pity on him ​and have the power to help, getting neither prayer nor praise nor thanks for their good offices. Of the many beneficent gods of the Navahoes, the chief war god, Nayenezgani is the most conspicuous. He appears throughout his career as a disinterested philanthropist. As a warrior he destroys the enemies of mankind, and as a transformer he changes things which in the past were evil to others which "in the days to come will be useful to man." Wind and the Little Wind People are beneficent divinities who are always ready to whisper into the ear of man—to give him good advice when he is in danger or perplexity.
But the legends speak not only of beneficent gods: they tell us of benevolent actions of men. Here is an instance of pity and prompt restitution, taken from a portion of the Navaho Origin Legend which is almost historic. While some members of the gens of Tha‘paha were sojourning at Agala, they sent two children one night to a spring to get water. The children carried out with them two wicker bottles, but returned with four. "Where did you get these other bottles?" the parents inquired. "We took them away from two little girls whom we met at the spring," answered the children. "Why did you do this, and who are the girls?" said the elders. "We do not know. They are strangers," said the little ones. The parents at once set out for the spring to find the strange children and restore the stolen bottles to them; but on their way they met the little girls coming toward the Tha‘paha camp, and asked them who they were. The strange children replied: "We belong to a band of wanderers who are encamped on yonder mountain. They sent us two together to find water." "Then we shall give you a name," said the Tha‘paha; "we shall call you To‘basnasai,—Two Come Together for Water." The Tha‘paha brought the little girls to their hut and bade them be seated. "Stay with us," they said, "you are too weak and little to carry the water so far. We will send some of our young men to carry it for you."
But ethics is a wide subject and embraces the whole range of human obligations. It includes not only the more important duties which come under the head of morals, but those minor ones which we designate as manners and etiquette. I might fill a volume with a discourse on savage etiquette, but I must limit myself now to a few illustrations. The gentleman already quoted who thought the barbarous tribe had no manners simply found a people who did not have his code of manners, and whom he probably impressed with the belief that he had none,—a people whose code of manners he violated at every turn. The savage is often incumbered with rules of behavior as he is with observances of religion. Travelers in America from the days of Columbus to the present day have com​mended the courtesy of our aborigines. The manners which the Europeans brought with them to this country were vastly different from the manners they found here, yet both must have had some elements in common. In the smiling faces of the dark hosts, in their prompt service, their free hospitality, and their generous gifts, the white guests at once recognized the essentials of good manners. I have spoken elsewhere ("Navaho Legends," p. 58) of the professional ethics of the shamans.
The Navaho myths do not tell us as much of the manners as they do of the morals of the people, yet they are not silent on the subject of manners, both good and bad. They indicate the deference due to age,—even among twins, the younger must defer to the elder,—the duties of hospitality, the modes of addressing a stranger and applying to him the appropriate terms of kinship, the forms of greeting; and they show us, too, with evident disapproval, the language and conduct of intentional slight and insult. Among some Indian tribes, it is said there is no word for thanks; but the Navahoes have one, and employ it on all occasions which we would consider appropriate. It appears, too, in the myths.
Perhaps some of their seemingly senseless rules of ethics might with profit be adopted by civilized people. I once told a young Benedict, a friend of mine, that in many Indian tribes it was not good manners for a man to meet, speak to, or even look at his mother-in-law, and that neither was it polite for her to recognize in any way her daughter's husband. "Ah," he said, with a sigh of deep feeling, "would that such rules of etiquette prevailed among ourselves."
Washington Matthews.