The Word Carrier (Santee, Nebraska), 1899-02

              the Word Carrier
©
VOLUME   XXVIII.
HELPING   THE   RIGHT,   EXPOSING   THE   WRONG.
NUMBER  Z.
SANTEE AGENCY, NEBRASKA.
FEBRUARY, i8qq.
FIFTY 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 die Power of God for
tlieir Salvation'
In this number we present several
very important and interesting articles that some may pass over because they seem so long. Dip into
them, and before you know it you
will be reading to the very last word.
"Siouan Migrations" is a companion
article to "Siouan Tribes of the
East" that appeared in January.
"A Visit to Leech Lake" brings us
into friendly contact with those
Chippewas who were so prominent
last summer. And "Lakota Land"
will charm all tbose who have
enough imagination to join in a
unique trip.
Dr. Lyman Abbott and the Nortb
American Review are publishing
the Divine Decrees regarding the-
Indians. No more reservations. No
more sentiinentalism. Turn the
the Indians loose; give him no
more attention than the Pole or
the Italian. If he dies let him;
the sooner the better. From the
divine law there is no appeal!
Nevertheless, we believe Dr. Abbott
runs beyond his revelation. He
cannot assert that this reservation
system that he wishes destroyed so
summarily is a part of the divine
law. He will agree that this system,
so altogether evil, has been built up
by the American people for its own
seliish advantage. Have we then
no responsibility in regard to the
method of the removal of the system? Is it not childish imbecility
to level it like a cob house to the
ground and then lay the consequences to the divine decrees? Ought
we not at least to try to ameliorate
the conditions we have created?
The Indians stand in a different relation to us from Poles, Hungarians
and Italians, because of our own action in regard to them. It is useless to deny it.
The Interior in its issue of January 5, has a highly dramatic story
from Indian life to prove the pro
position that as a matter of fact the
elevation of Indians has never been
accomplished. The heroine, an Indian maiden of the southwestern
plains, "as wild as the antelope and
free as the wind" is torn from her
home, her mother and her tribe and
imprisoned in a white man's school,
where she remains so long tbat she
begin's to love the new life and it
becomes impossible for her to live
without her music, her books,
and her art; when the same cruel
government forces her to return to
her tribe where she is quickly sold
in marriage for twenty ponies and
sinks to the level cf the rest of them.
Her life of degradation and shame
comes to its dramatic climax when
her drunken husband brains her
baby with his tomahawk and she in
turn shoots her husband and then
herself. Without doubt, some facts
may be gathered here and there like
those which make up this story,
but as a whole it is utterly untrue,
and the Interior might well be in
better business than giving circula
tion to such libels. The most charitable explanation is that the Interior has been imposed upon by some
disciple of the Carlisle school.
MANUAL  TRAINING AND INDIAN
YOUTH.
I have great faith in manual
training to arouse and sustain an
interest in school work on the part
of the Indian youth and their parents, but it must be very simple
and carefully chosen. The education that is to succeed must bear
immediate fruit; its value must be
at once apparent to the narrow-
minded, selfish and ignorant. The
normal product of an Indian school
must be an Indian still, but one who
is both willing and able to raise the
standard of working and living in
an Indian community. The boys
and the girls are to be trained, not
to cease to be Indians, but to be
better Indians.— C. M. Woodward,
in North American Review.
A VISIT TO LEECH LAKE.
About a month after the battle
with the Indians at Sugar Point.
I made a visit to the Leech Lake
country. I was hospitably entertained in the house of Rev. Charles
T. Wright, rector of the Episcopal
mission church here. He a is full
blood Indian, the son of White
Cloud, who was head chief of all
the Chippewas in Minnesota. White
Cloud had died a short time before; the son was therefore eligible
to the chieftainship. He had received a communication on the subject from some of the Indians at
White Earth and had the matter
under consideration when I was
there. A stranger generally finds
the Indians very reticent, but Mr.
Wright talked quite freely on every
question which I raised about his
people. This interesting man was
born forty-two years ago in a wigwam, and learned to read by studying pieces of newspaper and to
write by picking up old letters that
had been thrown away and imitating them. Then the Rev. Mr Gillil-
lan, noted for his missionary labor
among the Indians of Minnesota,
took the young man into his home
almost daily for nearly four years
and instructed him in the Bible.
After this a two years course of
study was taken at Faribault, and
Mr. Wright became pastor at Leech
Lake. When he put on his surplice and appeared before his old
companions for the first time as a
minister of the gospel, he said,
"My friends, in the years gone by
I used to gamble with you and beat
you badly. Now I have come to
preach the gospel to you and I
want to beat you again." And he
is "beating." During the twelve
years of his ministry he has baptized about 400 of them.
• While I was there a death occurred in the village, a Christian woman in a pagan family. The church
people gathered in the home and
spent the night singing hymns and
speaking words of comfort. I stood
outside a few minutes at about 11 p.
m., and could hear the wierd and
melancholy strain. The result was
that both the busband and the father of the deceased, with the little
children she had left, were baptized
the next Sunday.
"Hunting Indians with the gospel," says Mr. Wright, "is very
much like hunting moose. It does
not do to rush them. These animals are extremely ware and if a
man does not approach them cautiously, be may see their tracks but
he will never see them. But if an
Indian comes of his own accord to
the church two or three times, I begin to feel pretty sure that I am going to get him."
While I sat and tailed with him
the door was occasionally pushed
open without a knock and in stepped an Indian silently, till five or
six were present, some of them very
interesting to behold and contemplate. Lying on the floor behind
the stove was an old brave, seventy
years of age, but still active, named
at his baptism David Kirk, after
King David the warrior, for he has
been on tbe war path ten or eleven
times against the Sioux, and has
probably taken more scalps than he
has fingers. But all that belongs to
the pagan past, and he is now a
Christian Indian. When they are
converted the pastor requires them
to doff the blanket and cut their
hair as outward signs of the inward
grace.
Sitting before me was an Indian
policeman who had been with the
soldiers at Sugar Point during the
fight, and says he was shot at by
one of the soldiers through mistake
but missed. In fact the friendly
Indians were in greater danger than
the hostile, as the latter were hidden behind the trees, while the
former depended upon the soldiers
to recognize and spare them.
The whole affair of the battle, it
seems to me, was very unfortunate.
And looking back at it now from
tbe outcome, it seems too bad that
greater effort was not made to secure a peaceful settlement. I talked with a business man iu Walker
who knows the Indians well, and
says he made a proposition to the
authorities to bring in the twenty
Indians for $1,000. And he is confident that he could have done it
by pledging himself to care for
their families till they should be released. But another method was
adopted. The offenders are not in
yet and seven soldiers are in their
graves, among them the brave and
noble Major Wilkinson.
And what is the moral impression
left upon the Indain ? Are they
entirely subdued in spirit from the
chastisement tbey have received
from the Great Father ? Far otherwise. They are highly elated over
the manner in which they worsted
the soldiers. They say, "We feel
as tall as the pine trees." The attempts tbat have sometimes been
made to construe the affair into
a victory for the army, reminds one
of the Spanish victories of last
summer. No doubt tlie soldiers
did bravely, and there can be no
question as to how the victory would
have turned in the long run. And
as a matter of fact nearly all the
offenders surrendered. But as far
as that battle was concerned the
Indians had the best of it, aud they
are fully conscious of that fact.
They say there were only fourteen
of them engaged against seventy
soldiers. And while seven soldiers
were killed and many wounded, not
an Indian was touched. But scars
are found on the trees ranging
clear up to a height of forty feet,
and the Indian broadly grins when
he tells you about it.
Yet the whites who are posted on
Indian affairs and even soldiers
themselves are in sympathy with
the Indians. A young officer fired
up and said to me, "I don't blame
the Indians. They killed one of my
best friends, but if I had been used
as tbey have been used, I would
shoot every * * * white man I
saw." Of course this is intemperate
language, but it indicates what is a
pretty general feeling that the blow
of vengeance has not fallen in the
right place. While the Indians
have been technically at fault, the
whiskey peddlers and the lumber
swindlers are the real cause of the
trouble.
Tbe Indian, while he has plenty
of craft in matters of hunting and
fighting, his own specialties, is a
mere child in matters of trade. A
Sioux Indian who had accumulated
money, met a man driving a hearse,
took a fancy to it, thought it would
make a fine carriage for his wife and
children, and bought it on the spot.
Another at Leech Lake bought himself a fine carriage and team when
he had just about as much need of
a pullman car in the woods. Then
the Indian is nearly always poor and
lazy. Think of it, whimsical, simple, poor and lazy! What a fatal
combination oi weakness for the
lumber shark to prey upon. Take
a typical case. Here is an Indian
who has the right to cut dead and
down timber on a certain section.
But it takes money to run a logging
camp, and he has no money. Here
steps in the white man, and bargains with the Indian to cut it for
him, the Indian to pay all expenses
for camp supplies, wages, etc., out of
the proceeds of the logs when sold.
The white man keeps his own books
—works of fiction—and poor Lo is
the victim of the plot. When the
logs are sold it is found that the
expenses have eaten up nearly all
the proceeds and happy is the
Indian if he gets anything besides
experience.
But the cupidity of the.white man
is not the only difficulty in Indian
affairs. The Indian himself is the
chief difficulty. If he bad the ambition and thrift of the white man the
problem would solve itself, but he
has not. He will not tackle a hard
job and stick to it. He will not take
pains to accumulate a store against
the future. And when by a stroke
of fortune money falls to him he
has no sense of its vaiue. Here the
incident of the hearse and of the
fine carriage are in point. And another story is told of an Indian
from Lake Superior who suddenly
became rich by the sale of a mine,
when he took his friends down to
New York to see the sights, fed
them with sumptuous fare every
day, took them to a jeweler's and
decked them with costly gems.
And then when this grand revel of
the red gods was ended, he returned and set out, a poor man,
to prospect for another mine.—
Rev. S. N. McAdoo, in the North
and West.
Santee Normal Training School Press,
Santee Agency, Neb.