The Washington times., 1924-02-15
indians KNE "
ALL ABOUT
JAZZ
Research Shows Native Tribes
Also Had Secreta Of Happy
Married Life.
BY WILLIAM PARKER,
Copyright 1924, by Cosmopolitan
News SerVice.)


SANTA BARBARA, Cal, Feb.
15.-The noble red man solved the
secret OF how to be happy though
married, and jazz music was old
when the American nation was
young.
These interesting sidelights are
phases Of new and important dis
coveries relating to the life and
customs of the native tribes Of the
West coast, made by Prof. J. p.
Harrington, research associate for
the Heye Foundation Of the Museum
of the American Indian, in New
York City.
Very early in their domestic ex-
perience various tribes which
roamed the Pacific slope must have
realized that when married couples
see too much Of each other, mar
riage is apt to become burden
rather than q romance" said Prof.
Harrington to the Cosmopolitan
News Service correspondent. The
result Of this intuitive sense we
find highly developed in slch
! tribes as the Yurok, Karok, Hupa,
Chihula and other tribes. All Of
these tribes had a mating season
Of two months every year. When
this mating season was ovec the
men left the Indian village and did
not see their wives again until the
] following mating season. Hence
there were no divorces.
Was Romantic Lover.
. 1.-THE Indian was a romantic
lover, and he set the two most
romantic months Of the year for
the mating season, namely April
and, May. These were the months
when the country was at its hest,
birds were singing and nature was
| in a gay mood. The Indians did
! little courting or marrying in the
| melancholy months Of the fall.
1.-THE Homecoming of the Indian
men was a notable event. 1t was
a period of song and feasting.
| I'm analyzing numerous Indian
songs of these and other tribes L
! find an unmistakable syncopation
! running through them. When we
! Americans of this day and age talk
| about modern jazz we are trying
| to take credit for q really ancient
| music.
"The early Indians were very wise
| in natural science, too. They knew
| the earth was round, and records
we have found indicate they had
knowledge of a vast ocean to the
! east, the Atlantic Ocean. But they
were q very superstitious people
and had developed mental teleparhy
to q dangerous degree. They far
surpassed the Kahunas, the Ha-
waiian priests, in their power to
hate people to death. Old Indian
chiefs have described to me the
| most dramatic of mental battles
staged between two priests. with
| the tribes drawn up on either SIDE
az tense spectators. These priests
would shrek ineantations at each
| other, grab imaginary thunderbolts
from the air and hurl them. 1t
was only a. matter of time when
| one or the other would fall writh-
ing to ground, and the old Indian
chiefs told me- that many times the
defeated priest would die.
Feared White Man
The coming of the white man
filled the Indians with superstitious
fear. The white man baffled them.
When the religious teachers tried
to convert our religious beliefs to
them, the Indians could not COM
prehend what they were saying.
First, because the Indian knew
nothing about sin, he was immoral
in many ways, but not immoral,
for there was no moral standard
for him tos go by. So when the
religious teachers told him about
being punished for his sins, he
shook his head in perplexity. And
when Biblican chapters were trans.
lated into his native tongue it
might as well have been recited to
him in Greek. To see how utterly
illogical it was to the Indian mind,
take for example the first verse
of the twenty-third psalm, which
reads:
1.-The Lord is my shepherd, l
shall not want
Translated into the Indian Ian
guage it would be:
The Chief is my sheepherder,
shall not miss.
rs it any wonder that the Indian
did not understand us?"