The Word Carrier (Santee, Nebraska), 1900-12

              B9B
The Word Carrier.
VOLUME   XXIX.
HELPISG    THE    RIGHT.   EXPOSING    THE   WIIOVG.
n i;mi:i::; 8.
SANTEE, NEBRASKA.
DECEMBER, 1900.
FIFTY CENTS PER YEAR.
I
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 God for
tlieir Salvation!
THE HOME SCHOOL IN OUR SCHEME.
On the fourth page of this number
of the Word Carrier is a very significant article written by Miss Sarah Pollock and published in Mission Studies. It was written of the
Mission Schools for girls in foreign
countries under the care of the
Woman's Board of the Interior,
but it applies as well to the schools
of the Dakota Mission, some of
which were begun when this work
was under tbe American Board of
Foreign Missions. Without doubt
you have all read it, but please
read it again with the new application in view.
Our Dakota missionaries believe
that "our Mission Schools are a very
important part of the missionary
scheme," and that as such, those
already startedshould have "the best
support, the daily fervent prayers"
of our churches and of those interested in mission work. And they believe that "when God holds out to us
the privilege of founding one of these
schools at a new point," it should be
"hailed with acclamation".
Unfortunately there has grown
up in the minds of some connected with the American Missionary
Association a sentiment against
Indian Mission Schools. This year
when there was opportunity for the
establishment of two new Home
Schools in the Dakota field, and
when appropriation for such was
asked for the reply came, "There
seems to be a very general feeling
that the government schools are
covering the school ground, and
impressions made on the minds
of the Executive Committee from
various quarters have led them
to favor the development of other
Mission work rather than of the
Mission School work." And in the
Annual Report of the American
Missionary Association they put
themselves on record thus: "In view
of existing conditions it will be the
policy of your Committee to develop the direct evangelizing and mission work among the Indians rather
than to increase the educational
work or even to maintain permanently
the present number of schools, it
being evident that this is in accordance with the judgment of our
supporting constituency."
Could "direct evangelization and
mission work among the Indians"
be developed any more rapidly
than by a native agency which is
trained in Mission Home Schools ?
EDUCATION WITH GOD IN IT.
One bright, sunny day not many
months ago, found me out on the
sandy deserts of one of our Indian
Reservations in Arizona, far from
home, far from civilization and far
from all that makes life pleasant to
those who have been surrounded by
friends who care for the things we
all hold dear.
I had just met a man whose
"whole life had been spent among the
Indians, in the army, fighting them,
and now in the Indian Service trying to help them, and our discussion of ways and means of teaching
those Indians something of how to
take up the ways of civilization,
led to the subject of education.
"I wish every Indian school in the
country might be closed !" exclaim-
my friend.
I was astonished, and was on
the point of contradicting him,
when I remembered the years he
had spent among the Indians, so 1
hesitated and then asked, "Why?"
"Did you ever see an Indian benefited by education?" he asked in return.
I thought of tbe days and months
I had spent out among those people,
getting acquainted with them, and
of how I had learned to love and
even to admire many of them,
and then I tried to decide which
were the ones we loved and admired.
Were they those who had been
to school, who had learned enough
of white men's ways to go off the
reservation, and who were in a way
educated, or those who lived near
the centre of the reservation, hundreds of miles from civilization,
and who knew not a single word of
English and only enough of white
people to fear them ?
Of which class were those we
trusted as we would our best friends?
From which class would we choose
one to guide us over those weary deserts, and protect us from the white
men about?
I had gone down into that country
to help start a school, and was this
to be the result?
My heart sank, I answered, "No,
I have never seen one benefited,"
and rode home discouraged.
How long that state of mind lasted, I do not remember, but I do remember how guilty I felt whenever
I urged an Indian to send his children to school. Why I still did so
I do not know, except that I could
not give up the idea I had always
held that the Indian should be educated.
One night as 1 was thinking and
praying over this subject, the question came to my mind, "Did you
ever see an Indian who had been
to a Christian sehool?" 1 never
had. Among the twenty thousand
or more Indians belonging to to the
tribe among which I was working,
I had never seen or heard of a
Christian or of one who had been to
a Christian school, except the few
little ones who had just started in
with us, and they were too young,
and the school too recently begun to
see any results.
That question brought a ray of
light to me, and I prayed that I
might see somewhere what a Christian school meant, and what were
the results of the work.
When I came here to Santee a
few weeks ago, I felt that my prayer
was answered. Here the educated
Indians were the trusted ones, and
here the workers did not wish every
school closed.
What was the difference ?
My thoughts went back to the first
Indian I ever knew. An old Navajo
medicine man, who when he was"
sick came to the Mission to betaken
care of for awhile.    When he recov
ered and was leaving for home, he j
went around, thanking everyone for
their kindness' to him, and he said I
he had never been treated so well in I
his life before.    He could not understand it for a long time after he |
came, for he always  supposed that j
white people were all heartless and
unkind, but he thought and thought
and at last decided that white people with God in their heart were different from  white people without
him.
And so I have decided that Education  with  God  as   its foundation, and with the life and teach
ings of Christ as  an example  for i
our Indian boys and girls as they
grow   to   manhood    and   womanhood is  different   from education !
without those greatest of all things
in life.
And the prayer which goes up
from my heart continually is that
the time is not far off when someone
shall send workers to those people,
who are waiting anxiously to have
their children taught ofthe God who
makes his followers different from
those who know Him not, and for
those children to be fitted to come
home and tell them of the Father
who loves and cares for them more
even than they care for their children. Edith M. Dabb.
INDIAN FRUIT COUNTRY IN WINTER TIME.
Plum Creek from the south and
Cherry Creek from the north empty
into the Cheyenne River nearly opposite, and near the mouth of each
is a mission station. The mouths
of these creeks are and always have
been strategic points. Forty or fifty years ago when the American
Fur Company was trading with the
Indians north of the Black Hills,
about the head waters of the Cheyenne, Moreau and Grand Rivers,
and westward to the Rocky Mountains, their agents made their trail
down Cherry Creek, crossed the
Cheyenne at its mouth, and then,
climbing the ridges to avoid the
danger of ambush, crossed the
high and expansive divide to the
Bad River, and at its junction with
the Missouri River deliverd then-
goods at the Fur Company's store
house and stronghold, known as
Fort Pierre. The town of Fort
Pierre marks that place now, opposite Pierre, the capital of South Dakota.
After the time of the American Fur
Company, the gold discoveries in the
Black Hills made a great stage route
and freight trail from Fort Pierre
straight west to Deadwood. All
that great intervening stretch of
two hundred miles is now cattle
range. Tne inhabitants live in
ranches from ten to' fifteen miles
apart.
Our Indian mission stations along
the Cheyenne River are to be reached by traveling the olcl Deadwood
stage route from Fort Pierre. The
old stage stations have long since
disappeared. Their sites are marked by heaps of tin cans. Now there
are ranches along the old trail, about
eight and ten miles apart, that keep
straggling travelers overnight. The
road ranch is often over crowded; then the bunking on the floor is
very much over done. We came out
from Fort Pierre thirty miles on the
old  Deadwood trail  and   stopped
over night at O'Garey's ranch. The
Indians call him Many-children.
The next morning we left the Dead-
wood road and struck across the
divide thirty-five miles to Plum
Creek with no human habitation in
all the distance. And there we went
most ofthe way by the identical trail
that the agents of the American Fur
Company made half a century ago.
That trail is still visible in some
places. The present road where it
diverges follows down the valleys instead of the ridges, which is very
typical of the times. When life
was precarious men traveled on the
ridges for fear of their enemies.
Civilization makes roads in valleys,
barbarism on ridges!
At the mouth of Plum Creek there
is a Mission family school with ten
Indian pupils. There are two ranch
mans' stores, a cowboys' boarding
house, and a post office—mail triweekly—and a district school with
twenty pupils. This nucleus for a
town is scattered along the Cheyenne
for two miles, and coyotes live between places.
Across the Cheyenne River and
about the mouth of Cherry Creek
are scattered the buildings of a government sub-issue station, a trader's
store, Roman, Episcopal, and Congregational churches. The'Indians
live along the Cheyenne River and
Cherry Creek. The mouth of Cherry Creek is a focal point, and probably always will be, whatever changes
may come in the habitation of the
country. When the Indians have
developed into ranchmen, and when
the ranch men constitute a more
numerous citizenship, the junction
of Plum Creek, Cherry Creek, and
the Cheyenne River will be the metropolis and railway center.
The American Missionary Association work on Cherry Creek is at
present represented by an Indian
church of 130 members who are
struggling with the requirements of
partial self-support. On the Sabbath of our visit the Communion
service was held. A contribution
was taken for the Church Building
Society, which Society helped the
Cherry Creek church build their
chapel six years ago. Sunday afternoon we held our English service in
the district school house across the
river and in the evening gave a lantern lecture in the Cherry Creek
chapel, on Ciiristian civilization
and education, and the contrasting results of indolence and. industry.
Monday morning we started for
the Elizabeth Mission station thirty
miles down the Cheyenne River, by
way of the trail across an immense,
terraced, gravel plateau of pregla-
cial origin, the bed of a gigantic
water course now left as a plateau
hundreds of feet high and many
miles wide. North and South Dakota
west of the Missouri River is aland
of marvelous geological formation
on so gigantic a scale as to beggar
all description. The units of its
make up are only to be measured by
tens and fifties of miles. To the
slow wagon traveler,when the weather is either very hot or very cold
(and it is always at an extreme)
every ten miles seems a fifty.
F. B. Riggs.
Santee Normal Training School Prom.
Santee, Neb.