The Word Carrier of Santee Normal Training School (Santee, Nebraska), 1907-07 - 1907-08

              the Word Carrier
OF
SANTEE NORMAL TRAINING SCHOOL.
VOLUME XXXVI.
HELPING THE RIGHT, EXPOSING THE WRONG.
NUMBER 4.
SANTEE, NEBRASKA.
JULY-AUGUST, 1907
THIRTY CENTS PER YEAR.
Our   Platform.
For Indians we want American Education! We
want American Homes ! We want American Rights !
The result of which is American Citizenship! And
the Gospel is the power of their Salvation!
Marriage
June 26, 1907, Oxford, 0., at the home of
Prof. Stephen R. Williams, the brother of the
bride, John B. Ferguson, of Camden, 0., and
Margaret L. Williams, of Oxford, 0. The marriage ceremony was performed by Rev. Alfred
L. Riggs, D. D., of Santee, Neb. A number of
relatives were present from distant points:
among them Mrs. Auna Riggs Warner, of
Washington, D. C, Rev. and Mrs. A. L. Riggs,
of Santee, Neb., and Rev. and Mrs. W. H.
Crothers, of Fort Morgan, Col.
The Civilized Indian.
The Indian problem is one of the greatest
questions. The government has allotted to
every individual a piece of land on which he
or she is to stay and learn how to take care of
himself. The government has given us twenty
five years in which to learn this lesson. Besides
this our children are put in schools furnished
by tbe government in which to learn how to
take care of themselves in the future. All this
is intended to teach us how to be citizens. The
twenty five years given by the government has
nearly expired for some of the Dakotas. But
the Dakotas are as far from being citizens as
ever. They are called by that name and they call
themselves citizens, but that is all. Their ways
of living and doing are all Dakota yet, and worse
for the fact that their children are learning the
same things. When are we going to learn how
and be the right kind of citizens ! Not until
the land allotted to us to learn from, has been
taken from us. Because nearly all the Dakotas
have not learned the lesson of taking care of
themselves. They are not willing to work for
their living and to save their money. They
only wait to receive money from the government. When they hear that they are to receive
money, they stop working and think only about
the money coming to them. They have the false
idea that being citizens they can do anything
that a white man does. They get liquor any
time they like and because of it they think they
are citizens, but ultimately it will result in their
downfall. In the countries where they live
the white people encourage them to borrow
money or to get things on credit. They think
they have as much right to do that as any white
man, but they don't understand why they are
encouraged, only they think that tbey are doing
it because they are citizens. The fact is this,
that after they are hopelessly in debt, then the
white man can come and take anything they
have in line of money. There will be a time
when this will be done on a larger scale; taking
the land instead, and sending the Indian out.
Let us do our best to pay off our debts and
taxes, and not be in a hurry to sell our lands.
One thing that ought to be feared is the increase of tax debt. Right now there are people
who are in debt on taxes and that is pretty bad
for them. Tbe twenty five years has not fully
expired,but the time is coming when it will have
expired, and the deeds for our lands will be
given us. Then we shall have to pay taxes on
our lands. Our taxes will then increase and
some will increase their debts till their lands
are taken away from them.
• So those of us whose term has nearly expired,
let us consider this question. That those who
are able to take care of themselves get their
deeds and those who are not able ask the
government to leave their deeds for some years
to come till they are able. Because if we all
get our deeds, there will be many who will not
J>e able to hold out very long. So my friends,
let us think about this question, and let each
teach his children and his grandchildren this
lesson, for the time will come in their clay.
Eli Abraham.
The Oklahoma Constitution
It is claimed, and if the claim is based on
fact it is a significant one, that the best elements in the recent Oklahoma Constitutional
Convention had the Indian delegates as their
core of intellectual and ethical authority, men
educated in missionary schools and at Princeton, Yale and Harvard, the fruit of home missions and Christianization of the American In-
j dian.    Commenting on this fact the Nashville
I Christian Advocate  says:    "Practically all of
! these   men   spent   their boyhood  in mission
! schools.    Before they could go to Princeton or
| to Harvard or to Yale they had to get the rudi-
1 ments  of an  education.    They   had   even to
acquire a taste and a longing for an education.
It was the  missionary,   patiently delving for
these hid treasures, laboriously dealing, one by
one, with the shy and stolid individual—parents first, children later—who laid the foundation for the present noteworthy results.    The
Indian   gentleman,   alert,   well-trained,   well-
dressed, able to take care of himself in an important deliberative body, wearing tbe decorations of scholarly societies and the air of  a
thoroughly  educated   American,   attracts   the
attention and the admiration of the correspondent of the metropolitan newspaper.—Congregationalist.
From Wales, Alaska
I am expecting to get home for a month visit. Our supply boat is late in coming, and I
cannot leave until I see the supplies ashore.
One year in five or six it is wrecked. It is not
schedule time for the wreck, but if it should
come all the supplies for the herd and village
I would have to be bought at Nome.
Last week we had a visit from Mr. Lopp and
Mr. Updegraff, who is now in charge of this
division. He is trying to understand the reindeer situation and improve the school system.
Under Commissioner of Education Brown tbey
want to reorganize the whole business and get
it under government control, paying the mission for administering the business. I told
him they would run up against the law against
appropriating money in auy way to a mission.
He said that had never been thought of. The
whole situation is in a muddle.
Dr. Jackson's idea was to get reindeer into
the country to benefit the Eskimo. So he proceeded to get tbe reindeer and had no provision as to what to do with them when they were
in this country. The next move was to give
one hundred head to each mission to distribute
and let the mission bear all the expense. Mr.
Lopp was the only one who was ready to avail
his mission of this offer. Then Dr. Jackson
proposed loaning to a mission. Now the question is what obligation is the mission under to
the Government? What obligation is the man
who got his deer under, to the mission and
the governmeut ? None of these questions have
been considered up to the present time. There
are few contracts or agreements, written or
verbal, and all is in a mix-up.
In some places the reindeer is proving a
great benefit. Our mission has the best record
I think. The business now is just fairly established. And it will become more prosperous
from year to year. But this is the result of
the accident of finding gold, and making a
market for meat. Last year the mission came
out even, i. e. it paid all it had expended up to
date on the herd. And the profit for the care
of managing and interest on money is the deer
on hand, now about five hundred.
Accompanying Mr. Lopp was Mr. Halks-
worth a graduate of Bowdoin and Bangor, a
Congregational minister on his way. to Point
Barrows as government teacher, with his wife.
We are in the giddy whirl of city life compared with them.
The church work continues to be prosperous.
Helen and I made an evangelistic and business
trip up the coast one hundred miles in March
and April. I had planned to spend a week at a
new school at Shishmareff. But when I got
there the people had all but a few gone away.
The interpreter I was depending on for that
point had gone up one hundred miles further
a week before. So I failed to have the meetings
there. But at every other point or village we
had good services. Our Sunday school was
very enthusiastic. I think every one, large and
small, old and young, male and female, tried to
get out to that.
About two weeks ago a box of bibles and
testaments reached me. I had asked the Bible
Society for some eight months before. And
they were fifteen months on the way. By the
time they reached here nearly all of our village
had gone away. But almost every young man
and woman at home has bought a bible. When
they come back in the fall, the whole edition
will be bought up.
One of our brightest boys is going to be at
the Diomeda Island this winter as teacher's interpreter, and I think he will do good work
there. The year has been prosperous. Tbe
hunting exceptionally good. The fawning season was fine and death rate low, so the fawn
crop is large. Meat sales were good. We had
whooping cough all winter and lost seven children. But aside from that the health has been
good. I am troubled a good deal with rheumatism. Scarcely a night am I free from pain.
Just uow we are having fine weather. But on
the   whole   winter is the  pleasantest season.
James F. Cross.
A Mohawk Physician.
Dr. Oronhyatekha, Supreme Chief Ranger of
the Independent Order of Foresters, died at
Augusta, Ga., on March 4. He was a full-blood
Mohawk Indian. He took charge of this society
when it was an almost bankrupt organization
of 300 discouraged members, and in twenty-five
years gained for it a membership of 235,000,
with a surplus of over $11,000,000. In 1905
be founded an orphans' home, as an institution
of the Order, and at the time of his death was
building a home for aged Foresters in southern
California.
When King Edward VII was Prince of
Wales, on his visit to Canada he listened to an
address by Dr. Oronhyatekha, then a youth
fresh from college at Kenyon, O., and Toronto
University. He had been deputed by the chiefs
of the Six Nations to speak for them to the son
of "the Great Mother," as they called Queen
Victoria. The prince invited him to continue his
studies at Oxford, and be took up the study
of medicine there under Sir Henry Acland, the
Prince's physician. He returned to America a
graduated physician, and married the great-
granddaughter of Capain Joseph Brant, tbe
celebrated Mohawk chief of the Revolutionary
period.    A son and a daughter survive him.
Under his administration the Foresters have
built up an insurance business of a quarter of a
billion, and acquired an annual income of nearly
$4,000,000. His salary was $15,000 a year the
largest paid to any fraternal insurance officer.
—The Indians' Friend.
At a recent sale of town lots of Walthill a new
town on the Ashland extension of the Burlington railroad which crosses the Omaha reservation, a number of lots were sold to Indians.
The Indians are said to be well to do farmers,
who will follow the example set by their white
brethren and retire moving into town to send
their children to public schools.
I think I realize more than ever before that
we must not so much try to bring our Indian
pupils or the Indian people to our standards, as
to help them to make their own standards better, and then they will perhaps work out some
kind of a life a little different from our kind,
yet good perhaps in its way,—better anyway
than it would be if they thought we were too
rigid in holding them to our ideas. E. h.