The Word Carrier (Santee, Nebraska), 1926-11 - 1926-12

              The Word Carrier
of SANTEE NORMAL TRAINING SCHOOL.
VOLUME  LV
HELPING- THE RIGHT, EXPOSING THE "WRONG
S'ANTEF;  NEBRASKA.
ETov.-Dec, 1926
NUMBER 6
FTFTY CENTS PKR YEAR
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EMMA CM.MOON
'.'Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in
deal ii t hey are not divided"!
Emma Calhoun had been three and a half
years in the bomeof John 1'. Williamson, the
John, beloved of the Dakotas. She was
twenty-six. She had a good command of the
Dakota—the Sioux language. She knew how
to gel next to common folks. It. is not strange
that a young Home Missionary picked her up.
He was persuaded by his brother missionaries
among both whites and Indians to go with her
up the Missouri river and start a new Mission among three wild tribes. Their relatives
on both sides influenced by love, found various reasons why they should not go on an enterprise so hazardous.
In  War Time
But being young they saw no great danger.
To go together on an. adventure of faith was
a delight. They went eight hundred and fifty
miles by boat to the fur trading post of Ft.
Berthold, Dakota Territory. There is nothing now a.t the spot but a grave yard. It was
fifty years ago, .May 9, 1876, when that young
man and his bride landed there. At that same
time Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were on
their way to the Little Big Horn, and death.
Charlie Reynolds and three Ree scouts had
said goodbye and gone from Ft. Berthold to
die with them. The boat that carried the
outfit for the new Mission took on supplies
for Custer as it went up the river. The materials for a peace project were delivered at Ft.
Berthold. Tlie munitions of war were carried to the field of death.
After the battle fifty-two wounded men
were hurried down on the June Hood to Bismarck. A band of Sioux came to the bank of
the river opposite us. The tribes of the village about the Fort fired on them and they
fled. Once there was a threat of an attack on
wash day, but the brave young bride kept on
cleaning clothes. She said one might as well
die in a washtub as anywhere.
Frontier Life Fifty Years Ago
Yes, Missionaries have to wash and mend.
A lot of life is eating and wearing and building and Sleeping. Letters home were full of
orders to be filled. It was before the days
of catalogs. The goods had to come by boat
ninety miles from Bismarck before -the long
winters and snow drifts shut them in. Some
supplies came from our friends at Yankton,
and some from far-off New York.
SISTEZRS 02sT ^. MI
| The missionaries were just like the frontier people and Government employees about
them. It was only thru the mists of the long
distance across the continent that they looked
heroic to their friends. They knew themselves as every-day sinners, working and playing with the rest. They knew also, that while
most of the whites about them were putting
up with isolation and difficulty for the money
in it, they had come with a great purpose.
They knew that while others were out for a
short adventure, they had come fordife.
The Indian Department had built an
Agency about one and a half miles from the
fort. There was a line of five little wooden
houses, all alike, mere boxes. There was
an office and some store rooms. A board
fence was around all. Indian policemen
were on the watch day and night. A.log
shack in the middle of the enclosure was a place
of last resort in case of an attack. There
was a small cannon mounted on a wooden
carriage. The cannon is now in the rooms of
the Historical Society in Bismarck. One of
the wooden wheels is missing.
Close to the Indians
The Agency people looked kindly on the
new arrivals, but shook their heads, and
doubted in their hearts that enthusiasm'
would last.    The missionary doubted whether
SSION
Indian progress
There are 349,595 Indians in the United
States today, which is an increase of 16,585
over ten years ago. The death rate among
Indians has decreased from 32 in a thousand
in 1913 to 24 in a thousand last year. The
Government has 180 physicians located on
Indian "reservations and there are traveling
eye, ear, nose and throat specialists. There
are 135 nurses working among the Indians,
and 40 field matrons. The Indians in the
United States speak 58 different languages.
The Government is encouraging fairs to compete with white neighbors. Groups of Indians are being organized under their own
officers to encourage efforts in farming and
cattle raising. Sewing clubs have large enrollments and many Indian women earn a
good living working in native arts, in bead
work, pottery, and the weaving of blankets
and rugs. Chi b work with Indian boys and
girls is one of the leading features of the industrial program.
College Prize to Indian Girl
Mount Holyoke College has announced the
award of the Henry Morgenthau prize to Ruth
Muskrat, of the class of 1925. A Cherokee
Indian girl, Miss Muskrat won the coveted
honor as the member of the class who, in her
first year out of College,'has done the most to
pass on her education to others. The award
comes as a recognition of her work for the
people of her own race. Following her graduation last year, she returned immediately to
Oklahoma to be among her own people. She
served as Dean of Women at the Northeastern
Teachers' College of Oklahoma last summer.
At present she is teaching at Haskell Institute, the largest school for Indians in the
United States. Her chief concern is the difficult adjustments which the educated Indian
boys and girls face when going back to the
olcl life on reservations or beginning anew in
strange cities. During her college vacations
she was with Y. W. C. A., working among
girls and women on the reservations. From
her early school days she has been closely
identified with the movement. While still in
college she went to China as the first American Indian delegate to an international student gathering.—The American Friend.
MYRA CALHOUN
they had not left a tough Home Missionary
job for an easier one, which was then called
Foreign. Our white friends wanted them to
stay in what they thought the safest place.
But they had come to be missionaries to
the Indians, and to the outskirts of the Indian
village, they went and built their house. The
Indians called it the house with e.yes, because
of the windows all around. They seemed to
think that windows were to look in at. They
came and spread their blankets over the panes
and looked in. The house still unfinished
was occupied before winter. The Lord had
mercy on his tenderfoot children and the winter was mild. Spring came duly, and with
the first symptoms of warm weather, a new
baby. Another handicap? No indeed! An
ordained strength, the mother said, and a passport to many hearts.
Back East
Then the long summer days came and the
young couple went "Back East". They had
to show themselves and the new grandchild
to their relatives new and old, in Ohio and
New York. When the olcl home folks set
eyes on them, saw them in flesh and blood
safe from the terrors of frontier warfare,
they "thanked God-and took courage."
Then it was that Myra Calhoun was persuaded to join her older sister as a co-worker.
Myra was from the same school in Oxford,
Ohio that had prepared her sister Emma,
and inspired her with missionary zeal. Myra
was an attractive young woman in the bloom
of early youth. She reached the Mission a
year and a half later than her sister. A room
had just been made ready in the new house
for her. The government had built a school
house close by and appointed one teacher.
Myra was the other, supported by the Mission. She speedily learned to talk a little in
the Gros Ventre language. We gave the
people a little Gospel and sang a few verses in
three different tongues.
A Christ Home
The home was made attractive. Here was
an object lesson tothe Indians,a clean Christian
home. Two women in it had been moulded
by the potter who shapes his clay into lovely
form and beauty of soul. The necessary tasks
of bodily existence were glorified b.y a high
motive. Christian living was made iuminous
to a people "sitting in darkness".
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