ht for a single
performance to our metropolitan stage. But they will never be seen
away from the soil on which they have been conceived and perpetuated.
It is with a simple cordiality the redman permits you to witness the
esthetic survivals of his great race. It is the artist and the poet
for whom they seem to be almost especially created, since these are
probably nearest to understanding them from the point of view of
finely organized expression; for it is by the artist and the poet of
the first order that they have been invented and perfected. We as
Americans of today would profit by assisting as much as possible in
the continuance of these beautiful spectacles, rather than to assist
in the calm dismissal and destruction of them. It is the gesture of a
slowly but surely passing race which they themselves can not live
without; just as we, if we but knew the ineffable beauty of them,
would want at least to avail ourselves of a feast for the eye which no
other country in existence can offer us, and which any other nation in
the world would be only too proud to cherish and foster.

We are not, I think, more than vaguely conscious of what we possess in
these redman festivities, by way of esthetic prize. It is with pain
that one hears rumors of official disapproval of these rare and
invaluable ceremonials. Those familiar with human psychology
understand perfectly that the one necessary element for individual
growth is freedom to act according to personal needs. Once an
opposition of any sort is interposed, you get a blocked aspect of
evolution, you get a withered branch, and it may even be a dead root.
All sorts of complexes and complexities occur. You get deformity, if
not complete helplessness and annihilation. I can not imagine what
would happen to the redman if his one racial gesture were denied him,
if he were forbidden to perform his symbolic dances from season to
season. It is a survival that is as spiritually imperative to him as
it is physically and emotionally necessary. I can see a whole flood of
exquisite inhibitions heaped up for burial and dry rot within the
caverns and the interstices of his soul. He is a rapidly disappearing
splendor, despite the possible encouragement of statistics. He needs
the dance to make his body live out its natural existence, precisely
as he needs the air for his lungs and blood for his veins. He needs to
dance as we need to laugh to save ourselves from fixed stages of
morbidity and