The Word Carrier (Santee, Nebraska), 1899-03

              the Word Carrier
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VOLUME   XXVIII.
HELPINO   THE   RIGHT,   EXPOSING   THE   WRONG.
NUMHEH ;;.
SANTEE AGENCY, NEBRASKA.
OUR   PLATFORM.
For Indians we want American Education! We want American Homes!
We want American Rights! Tlie result of which is American Citizenship '.
And the gospel is the Power of God for
tlieir Salvation'
Miss Anna L. Dawes presents an
important point in an article, A
Great Opportunity, published in the
Southern Workman, which we reprint to give it further circulation.
The Indian as well as the negro
needs to live for his race. He must
have an ideal and a tomorow. To
obliterate his personality by sinking him in the mass of white men
with whom he cannot compete, takes
away the incentive to noble endeavor and sacrifice. But he regains it
when the fate of his race is in his
keeping. When educated Indians
will live and work as the colored
soldiers at Santiago fought, each
one feeling responsible for the honor
and standing of the whole colored
race, then there will be a future for
the Indian and not until then.
MARCH, i8qq.
FIFTY CENTS PER YEAR-
THE  BLACK HILLS CLAIM.
By the Sioux treaty of 1876 the
region of the Black Hills was thrown
outside of the lines of the Great
Sioux Reservation and became a
part of the public lands of the
United States. And the payment
for it was agreed upon. But now a
scheme is on foot to work up a claim
against the government on the
ground tbat the Black Hills have
never beeu paid for. It is assumed
that the Indians still have an interest in the mineral wealth whose extent and richness was not understood at the time of the treaty. It
opens the question as to what kind
of title Indians hold in their wild and
unimproved lands. The only defensible principle is that they have as
much interest and title in it as the
use they make of it and no more. It
is not what the land is worth to some
civilized man who can get ten or
a hundred times as much value out
of it by his skilled labor, combined efforts and capital. Upon this
ground the Sioux Indians' title and
property interest in the Black Hills
is measured by the value of the tent
poles they went iuto the Hills once
a year to cut. But as for the mineral wealth that lay hidden there, the
tin, the silver and the gold, in all
that they had not a cent's worth of
interest or title. And what they
had not then they have not acquired
since then through other men's labors and investments. Therefore,
as we understand the case, there is
no ground in equity for this claim.
And again it is highly detrimental
and injurious to the western Sioux
tribes, who are the interested parties if this claim is prosecuted.
In order to interest them in the matter sufficiently to raise tne large
monthly subscriptions required by
the promoters of the claim, they will
not be allowed to think of much else.
They must necessarily be moved by
visions of untold wealth coming to
them when the gold of the Black
Hills mines pours into their pockets. Labor will be entirely destroyed, economy thrown to the winds,
and, in place of a people who are
settling down to something of industry and self-help, they will be
converted into a pauper rabble,
easy to be inflamed to riot and war.
The United States is doing full
enough for these Indians now. The
money might be applied more wisely. But no good would come from
having the amount increased, but
rather it would be a curse. The
scheme stands upon no principle of
righteousness and can only be productive of misery.
A GREAT  OPPORTUNITY.
The man or woman who goes out
from Hampton educated to use his
brain and his hands, goes with the
purpose strong within to help his
race. He knows that for him the
call to service is larger and more
inspiring than it is to his white
brother; for whatever may be true
as to quantity, in quality of opportunity, the red and the black Samaritan have an immeasurable advantage over the young man whose
skin is white. The needs of our
neighbor are so many they cannot
be counted, and so various that
none can ignore them, but they are
needs of a class, if we be white.
To the Negro and the Indian they
are the needs of a race. To him it
is given, not to lift up the needy
alone, but thereby to lift up a people—■ yea more to lift up a race.
What he is tells far more than what
he does, for each and every one of
him exhibits and illustrates the possibilities of his kind for good or evil,
for progress upward or downward.
Each and every man or woman, inspires his fellows to like action;
each and every one incarnates, for
example and illustration, the whole
spirit of his people, • the whole
genius of bis race.
It is only now that in either of
these races, men and women have
reached that period when they see
this glorious opportunity for themselves. Its greatness sometimes inspires them, sometimes discourages
them. Booker Washington sees it
and it inspires him, though he can
see but one method to reach it.
William Bu Bois sees it, and looking at it from the Northern standpoint rather than the Southern, he
finds it more discouraging than does
Washington. Among the Indians,
no leader has yet appeared to wake
them out of sleep. Charles Eastman seeks the opportunity but does
not grasp it; to Carlos Montezuma
it is but another great refusal. Is
it still too early for ihis opportunity
to appear in the western horizon?
Or is it that the influence of that
great genius Samuei Armstrong, is
still potent in the one race, inspiring
all the men of its blood, while the
other racy has been from the first
even at the best, beset with various
and disintegrating influences? Who
shall say ?
But whatever may be true either
' way, of great leaders like Du Bois
and Washington, and of men of the
strongest character and individuality like Eastman and Montezuma,
two things are true of the great body
of these races. Until this conception of present and great opportunity permeates the mass, and
many men and women are moved
by it, the race itself will not have
the force, or indeed the motive, to
overcome the unusual obstacles in
the way of its advancement.    And
until the men and women inspired
by this great idea, see tbat its
methods must be largely simple and
homely methods, it will make no
progress. Sometimes men forget
the great hope, sometimes tbey
forget the dusty way. If Booker
Washington errs anywhere, it is in
forgetting the great light of patriotic
duty and racial hope which illumines the weary road. If his ignorant and foolish brethren in North
Carolina could but remember the
immediate need of self-restraint and
personal character, they would not
mistake an ignis fatuus ot office-
holding for the torch of the great
Goddess of Liberty.
We ourselvs are not without blame
in the matter of the Indian. We
have preached to him the duty of
assimilation and absorption till he
sees only destruction,and in despair
gives up the fight and falls into that
condition of slackened manhood
worse than barbarism because more
hopeless. That which should come
about through pride of race, we cannot hurry through any bloodletting
empirics. Life is too strong for
our faint-hearted compromises. The
Irish American is the magnificent
result of blending the best in two
races, but it comes about through
a just pride in both, acknowledged
by all his fellows. If the transplanted Swede already rules the
land he has settled in, it is not
because he forgets his race, but be
cause he glorities it. It is the lack
of race, the mock meekness which
is despair, that has broken the spirit of the black and the red races,
and made the one so difficult to
raise, the other so difficult to control. When there is no to-morrow
for a race it will eat and drink in
any fashion, or at any cost.
The ability with which the Anglicized Choctaw and Cherokee ruled
his people in the older time, when
he hoped to perpetuate his state, is
ample illustration of the national
hope. The shrewdness with which
he has exploited that same people
when he placed his personal profit-
above the slow self-sacrificing ways
of public service is ample illustration of the need of homely method
to raise a race from dependence to
independence.
This is the double evangel which
both races need. The high glory of
an ideal for their race, the incarnation of it in homely service. In
both cases their own leaders have
forgotten or neglected the one or the
other. The head of gold had feet
of clay, hut the clay was mixed witb
iron. The glorious ideal must firmly tread ti;e earth if it is to be seen of
men and be adopted by them. It is
the same need for both races—an
ideal and a leader, and daily duty-
doing—faith and fidelity. But tbe
emphasis falls in the opposite quarter with each of them. The Indian
needs leaders and for him the emphasis must be laid there, and on
the glory and large possibility of his
race, with its genius for government, its extraordinary sense of
organization, and its guardianship
of the lost art of oratory. But
though the need of the Negro is
leaders also, it is that he may learn
the ways of life. His need is missionaries from among his own, who
shall preach the plain simple duties
of every day and the value of personal character in the smallest
hamlets, the backwood cabin. Not
teaching in the large schools so
much, but in out of the way
corners,—tedious, unnoticed teaching, teaching on the end of a log i;i ,
Garfield's famous phrase. This race
needs the self sacrifice of its best and
ablest to work in its hardest places.
It was the ablest of the younger
engineers in the Navy, wdio proposed to sink the Merrimac at the
cost of his life. It was one of the
most brilliant and prominent of the
younger citizens of New York who
led his Rough Riders up San Juan
hill. It was because Samuel Armstrong was willing to sink into the
insignificance of a school teacher to
a despised people, that he became
the prophet of a race, and, in no
small measure, the savior of his
country. All these men, and many
others, but whose work was equally
potent, saw that the daily monotonous teaching of their fellow
men to do their duty was the only
preparation for the great emergency; and all of them forgot themselves—no, were splendidly conscious of themselves—in doing it.
But to each of them, to all heroes,
there came first the vision of what
it  meant.    And this   is where we
have failed.    We have thought that
the black man  would  be   content
with opportunity, and have  given
him no ideal.     We have preached
to him to live a good life, because it
was better so, happier so, easier so.
We have begged him to forget that
he was black, and remember only
that he was a man.  Let us acknowledge our mistake and come to him
with a, new message.    It is a message for the humblest and worst, for
if they cannot be reached the whole
mass sinks together.     A new uplift
in  character and  the plainest  of
virtues is inexorable necessity,  but
it is only the open vision that gives
strength and courage for such humble duties.     We have forgotten to
tell  the  plain   man,   the ignorant
man, that his race asked it from
him,  his color demanded it  from
him.     It is the black man of the
United States  alone, who can demonstrate  that the brown races are
not essentially inferior to all other
peoples.     He can if he will, show
that he is really a man and a brother.   And therefore it is,that on him
alone, in a very real sense, hangs
the whole question of the destiny
of half the race, the whole future
of Democracy.    What opportunity,
what responsibility!    Never since
the Jew  failed to see the mission
of his race, has any other had such
an opportunity.     When will its people awake to this its great mission ?
When will tbey glorify the simplest
efforts of the humblest of their race
with his share in such a work? For
if this fails, as the sun rises over tne
shores of the  Eastern  lands,  the
day of Democracy is over perhaps
forever.—Anna   L.   Dawes, in   the
Southern Workman.
Talk about winds in the Dakotas
or Nebraska! The place to find
wind is down in Arizona. There it
is so uneudurably windy that frequently the clothes pins are seen
flying away with the clothes in
their mouths seeking some nuiet
place in which to spread them.