Chief Luther Standing Bear

Indian people are lovers of nature. He loved the
earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The
old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on
the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was
good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove
their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their
tepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth,
and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew.
The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.

That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of
propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to
sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to
feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life
and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.

Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real
and active principle. For the animal and bird world there existed a
brotherly feeling that kept the people safe among them and so close
did some of the people come to their feathered and furred friends that
in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.

The Indian people were wise. They knew that man’s heart away from nature
becomes hard; they knew that lack of respect for growing, living things
soon led to lack of respect for humans, too.

In the Indian the spirit of the land is vested; it will be until
other men are able to divine and meet its rhythm. Men must be born and
reborn to belong. Their bodies must be formed of the dust of their
forefathers’ bones.

[The Indian] was kin to all living things and he gave to all
creatures equal rights with himself. Everything of earth was loved and
reverenced.

Chief Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston & New York, 1933.