4o8 swanton: international misunderstandings 



is common to both savage and civilized society, and the "full 

 dress" of a primitive belle is often more ample than that of her 

 civilized counterpart. It is no more depraved to abandon the 

 aged and infirm to die — especially when other members of the 

 band may have difhculty in keeping alive themselves — than it 

 is to allow thousands of one's fellows to be born into the slums 

 found in some of our great cities and drag out there the miserable 

 existence to which they are condemned. The savage sometimes 

 fasts and scarifies himself in the hope of obtaining help from 

 imaginary beings and becoming thereby rich and successful, 

 but this infliction is temporary and rarely results in permanent 

 injury to the devotee, while civilized men in pursuit of fortune 

 throw over their health and everything else that would make the 

 fortune worth having. The savage sometimes resorts to human 

 sacrifice, generally of men from other tribes, but for his own 

 self-advancement; the white man too frequently permits a slow 

 sacrifice of other members of his own nation. 



Aside from misunderstanding the natm-e of savage customs 

 and beliefs in themselves and an accompanying obliquity re- 

 garding the customs and beliefs of his own people, civilized man 

 constantly does injustice to his primitive brother by interpreting 

 customs as exhibitions of wilful moral depravity. The immo- 

 bility often displayed by Indians on meeting after a long period 

 of separation is attributed to coldness of disposition. The 

 great numbers of tasks which savage women perform are thought 

 to be arbitrarily imposed upon them. The indignities heaped 

 upon captives or persons cast away among primitive people by 

 accident are cited as proofs of a brutal and bloodthirsty dispo- 

 sition. And the ease with which such peoples credit the pro- 

 nouncements of their medicine-men is, of course, a clear demon- 

 stration of an innately "superstitious" temperament. All of 

 these things are held up as so many evidences of "naturally" 

 depraved minds. One writer, observing that the Indians among 

 whom he was traveling applied the terms "father" and "mother" 

 to a number of different people, inferred that the relationship 

 was in doubt and that their morals must be of the loosest char- 

 acter, being entirely ignorant of the fact that these terms were 



