The Word Carrier (Santee, Nebraska), 1901-02 - 1901-03

              The Word Carrier.
VOLUME   XXX.
HELPING    THE    RIGHT,   EXPOSING    THE   WRONG.
NITMHKH8 2, 3.
SANTEE, NEBRASKA.
FEBRUARY-MARCH, 1901.
FIFTY CENTS PER YEAR.
OUR PLATFORM.
For Indians ice want American Education! We want American Homes!
We want American Rights! The result of which is American Citizenship!
And tlie gospel is the Power of Ood for
their Salvation!
"THE  SOFT HEARTED   SIOUX."
Zitkalas"a has come to the surface again in an article with this
heading in Harper's Magazine.
The hero, whose autobiography is
here given, is the hopeful son of a
noted Sioux warrior, who is in a
fair way to grow up to honors that
may rival his father's. But un-
forunately he is, in some mysterious way, switched off from a noble
life and the ancestral ideals, and
for nine years is under the deteriorating influences of the mission
school. From which he finally emerges with a Bible under his arm, a
disciple of the soft hearted Christ.
Arriving at the camp of his people
he searches out the house of his father to find his beloved grandmother
dead and his father fatally sick and
in the hands of the conjuring medicine man. In righteous indignation
he drives the medicine man- forth
and makes him his enemy. He attempts to preach to his people but
the conjuror taunts him as a soft
hearted fool, who lets his father
starve because he dare not kill, and
in a foreigner's dress is a traitorto
his people. So the camp breaks up
and moves far away leaving the one
family of the dying man with the
soft hearted son.
Want stares them in the face.
There is no meat in the tent and
the starving, dying man knaws his
old buffalo robe to stay his hunger-
pangs. The disciple of the soft
hearted Christ now rushes out
regardless of his new principles,
speeds on snow shoes to a near-by
white man's herd, picks out the
fattest one aud slashes off choice
chunks of beef to carry home. Returning over the snowy hills he is
overtaken by the wrathy owner, and
there is an unfortunate mix-up of
prairie, moon, and stars, one uppermost and then the other. When
earth and sky assume their normal
relations, there is a dead man on
the snow and a bloody knife in the
hand of the living one. But alas
the aged warrior enjoys not that
juicy beef. He lies dead in the teepee. The soft hearted fool now
sends his mother to the camp of the
medicine man and delivers himself
up to justice. Ashe waits in jail
the coming of the hangman, he wonders where death will land him; and
the story ends in a kaleidoscopic mix
of heaven and hell, his warrior father and the loving Jesus, saints and
out-casts. But whether one or the
other it matters not. His heart is
strong, his face is calm. He soon
will know, and will be satisfied either way.
The animus of the story is to praise
the pagan savage and ridicule Christian civilization. The noblest Roman
of them all is the tall strong medicine
man with the serpent eyes. The uncivilized wild, unprofaned by white
man's tread,is the untainted ground.
Plenty and happiness belong to the
old Indian ways. Want and suffering come with the new ways.
The presentation of Christianity
is a travesty. The God of the Christian is but "an abstract power"
that makes no appeal to the human
heart. The commandment, Thou
shalt not kill, is perverted to deny
the right to take animal life for food.
In truth the "soft heart" produced
by the new faith is a very namby
pamby affair. The young preacher
stands fingering the leaves of his
bible before he enters th# door of his
father's tent whom he has not seen
for nine years. From summer days
to midwinter the "soft hearted" do-
nothing spends his time upon his
knees at his father's bedside praying
and reading the white man's bible to
him. Then drawn forth by hunger
he stands at the teepee door to wonder at the problem of the universe
while his father starves within.
The story is written in an easy,
engaging style, and has a certain
dramatic power, but is morally bad.
Our-Cheyenne-River
ZMiissio:LNr.A.:R,3r° zfhelzd.
has
tion
Rev. Thomas L. Riggs is superintendent of Oahe School, and
also the care of the large field on the Cheyenne River Reserva-
In this are included:
Plum Creek Boarding School
for ten pupils, in charge of
Mr. and Mrs. W. M. Griffiths.
Cherry Creek Church and Station,
Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Ward.
65 miles from Oahe,
near Cheyenne   River,
on south side.
70 miles from Oahe,
north side Cheyenne R.
Touch-the-Cloud Station, 90 miles from Oahe,
Supplied by Native Missionary Society. south side Cheyenne R.
Elizabeth Memorial  Station,
Rev. and Mrs. Edwin Phelps.
Virgin Creek Church and Station,
Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Yellowhawk,
Little Moreau Church and Station,
Mr. Benj. Zimmerman.
Moreau River Church and
Remington Memorial Station
Mr. and Mrs. Justin Blackeagle.
Hope Station on Bear Creek,
Mr. and Mrs. John Bluecloud,
Thunder Butte Station,
Mr.- Bluecloud supplies.
35 miles from Oahe,
north side Chtyenne R.
70 miles from Oahe,
between Cheyenne and
Moreau Rivers.
go miles from Oahe,
north side   Moreau   R.
115 miles from Oahe,
via Agency, south side
Moreau  River.
123 miles from Oahe,
via Agency, south side
Moreau  River.
150 miles from Oahe,
via Agency, South side
Moreau River.   •
THE SENSE OF OWNERSHIP.
There is no more direct route to
the understanding of the value of
property than that which comes
from a sense of ownership. We
read with greater care and interest,
the book which we have bought with
money earned by us. We have, as
a rule, a somewhat lessened interest
in the one we have borrowed and we
would care still less for the opportunity to go to a pile of government
books and use as we choose, throwing back the halfworn ones into the
common pile. People do not read
the public documents issued after
months or years of careful and intelligent preparation, simply because they cost nothing.
In the Indian Schools there is
no more important task than the
education of pupils to an understanding of the value and care of
property.
There have been schools where
the reverse was taught; where, on
bathing day, the child went to the
common closet and took the clothing which seemed nearest his size
and was in best condition, leaving
his neighbor to likewise take the
best that was left. Pupils sometimes have no clothing marked for
them; own no clothing, have no
place of their own- at table, no
beds of their own and no rooms of
their own to enjoy—and to keep
clean.
An ideal condition for this form
of education would be where the
pupil must do the work of keeping himself, his clothing and his
premises clean, or where he can
easily see that the work for him
which can be better done by others
is paid for by him with other effort
of his own. Any arrangement of
duties and responsibilities which
tends toward this condition is a
step in the desired direction.
In how many schools do the girls
mend their own clothing? There
are some places where they do: are
there still places where they do
not ? Care of clothing can only
be taught by imposing the penalties
for carelessness which the good
mother imposes in the good home
in whatever state of society. Many
dresses are torn because the dress
does not belong to the girl who
wears it, or because the chances
are that some other girl will have to
mend it.
Lectures will not teach the care
of property. Punishment, corporal
or capital will not do it. There is
noway but Nature's way and that
is that the pupil should, as nearly
. as possible, earn what he gets and
repair the damage resulting from
his own carelessness or accidents.
— The Oglala Light.
Mr. Riggs visits these stations more or less regularly during the
year. Communion services are held every two months with the different church organizations. The round trip usually takes ten days
or more according to the state of the weather and the streams, and
about three hundred miles is traveled in making the tour. On one
trip streams were crossed twenty-two times.
NOTES FROM THE FIELD.
At Rosebud, Rev. J. F. Cross is ap-
1 prehending a siege of small pox. It
has been sporting itself on the confines of the reservation for some
months,and has now marched in. At
Santee, Doctor Ira, the Agency physician, has been putting some eight
hundred of the population through
the manuel of "arms," to be prepared for its coming. At Crow Reservation, where our J. G. Burgess is,
they rather like the quarantine, and
make us of it to keep away unwelcome visitors.