How important is breathing? Pinch your nose and mouth shut and you’ll soon find out. Breathing is something we take for granted, it is automatic and we don’t give it much thought unless we are having trouble getting air into our lungs. This is a problem since a high percentage of humans breathe improperly. From mouth breathing, overbreathing, shallow breathing to sleep apnea, breathing disorders are rampant. Looking back through the lens of our evolutionary ancestry we can see that all indigenous peoples and ancient cultures placed great emphasis on proper breathing. In his fascinating book “Breath”, James Nestor relates this account of George Catlin, who spent 6 years traveling among the Indians of the Great Plains in the 1830’s, just before these tribes began to feel the effects of the genocide that was soon to destroy their cultures. Catlin documented the lives of over 50 Native American tribes.

Catlin wrote that “ I am traveling this country, as I have before said, not to advance or prove theories,but to see all I am able to see and tell it in the simplest and most intelligible manner I can to the world, for their own conclusions.” He would paint over 600 portraits and take hundreds of pages of notes forming one of the most complete records ever to document the Plains Indians at the height of their culture. His book “My Life Among the Indians” gives a glimpse into a lost culture.

Nestor writes: “The tribes varied region by region, with different customs, traditions and diets. Some, like the Mandan, ate only buffalo flesh and maize, while others lived on venison and water, and still others harvested plants and flowers. The tribes looked different too, with varying hair colors, facial features, and skin tones. And yet Catlin marveled at the fact that all 50 tribes seemed to share the same superhuman physical characteristics. In some groups, such as the Crow and Osage, Catlin wrote that there were few men, ‘at their full growth, who are less than six feet in stature, and very many of them six and a half, and others seven feet.’ They all seemed to to share a Herculean make of broad shoulders and barrel chests. The women were nearly as tall, and just as striking.”

“Having never seen a dentist or doctor, the tribal people had teeth that were perfectly straight- ‘as regular as the keys of a piano,’ Catlin noted. Nobody seemed to get sick, and deformities and other chronic health problems appeared rare or nonexistent. The tribes attributed their vigorous health to a medicine, what Catlin called ‘the great secret of life.’ That secret was breathing.”

“The Native Americans explained to Catlin that breath inhaled through the mouth sapped the body of strength, deformed the face , and caused stress and disease. On the other hand, breath inhaled through the nose kept the body strong, made the face beautiful, and prevented disease. ‘The air which enters the lungs is as different from that which enters the nostrils is as different as distilled water is different from the water in an ordinary cistern or a frog pond,’ he wrote.

“Healthy nasal breathing started at birth. Mothers in all these tribes followed the same practices, carefully closing the baby’s lips with their fingers after each feeding. At night , they’d stand over the sleeping infants and gently pinch their mouths shut if they opened. Some Plains tribes strapped infants to a straight board and placed a pillow beneath their heads, creating a posture that made it much harder to breathe through the mouth”

“All these methods trained children to breathe through their noses, all day, every day. It was a habit they would carry with them through the rest of their lives. Catlin described how adult tribal members would even resist smiling with an open mouth, fearing some noxious air might get in. This practice was as ‘old and unchangeable as their hills,’ he wrote, and it was shared universally throughout the tribes for millenia”