Welcome to our Sunday Talks.

Today's talk was edited and adapted from The Soul of the Indian, which was written by the Native American

author and physician Charles Eastman, published in 1911.

The original attitude of Native Americans toward the eternal, the great mystery that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted.

To them it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible

in this life.

The worship of the great mystery was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking.

It was silent because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect.

Therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration.

It was solitary because they believe that the Creator is nearer to us in solitude,

and there were no priests authorized to come between them and their maker.

None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another.

They were created children of God and stood erect as conscious of their divinity.

Their faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive

it. Hence there was no preaching, proselytizing, nor persecution. Neither were there

any scoffers or atheists. Being natural men and women, Native Americans were intensely poetical.

There were no temples or shrines among them save those of nature.

They would have deemed it sacrilege to build a house for the Creator who may be met

face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest,

or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and

pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky.

The god who enrobes himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible

...