The Word Carrier of Santee Normal Training School (Santee, Nebraska), 1913-09 - 1913-10

              The Word carrier.
of Santee Normal Training School.
VOLUME  XLII
HELPING THE  RIGHT, EXPOSING THE WRONG.
NUMBER 5
SANTEE, NEBRASKA.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 191K
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 God for their Salvation !
The Quarterly Journal of Society of American Indians has come to hand. Arthur C.
Parker of Washington, D. C. is Editor-General
with Sherman Coolidge, B. D., Carlos Montezuma, B. S., M. D., and John M. Oskison
M. A. as conti-ibutine: editors. The Journal
has a manly ring to it which we like. It would
he well for every educated Indian to lend a
hand to its support. The subscription price is
$1.00 a year.     	
The New Bible Department at Santee
P.ible study is the back bone of the whole
.curriculum at Santee from Primary Department to High School. It is now planned to carry this on further and develope the study more,
to prepare teachers for Y. M. C. A. training
classes, Sunday Sehool superintendents and lay
preachers. A two years course is laid out for
Hitch School graduates and a three years course
for those of lesser attainments. It is also propos-
ed to open a three months Pastors' course, a
prolonged institute, for the better training of
those already pastors of congregations. Two
elasses will be held each year.
Tlie Presbyterian Board of Home Missions
has united with the American Missionary
Association to organize and support this new
department. And the Presbyterian Board contributes tour thousand dollars towards a new
school house, to make room for this enlargement of the school.
While this is to be a department of Santee
Normal Training Sehool and its corps of teachers will all take part in teaching these new
classes, there is to be a special head to this
department and Rev. Jesse P. Williamsou, son
of Kev. John P. Williamson, is the one chosen
for this place.
This new departure aroused much interest at
at our General Missiou Conference at Red Hill.
Many of the Presbyterian Indians who have
been persistent friends of Santee are glad that
now they can befriend the school without criticism . The appointment of Rev. JesseWilliamson
is pleasing to all. 	
Another Philanthropic Humbug
The Rodman Wanamaker expeditiou of citizenship to the North American Indian, what
ever that may mean, isgoing the rounds of the
Indian agencies, hoisting a United States flag,
the present of Mr. Wanamaker, with ceremonies
and a speech by Dr. Joseph K. Dixon the manager, and taking picture films of the show for
the million dollar Indian museum that is to be
built at Fort Wadeworth, N. Y. As a philanthropic enterprise it is a farcical anachronism
but as a business scheme it may be a colossal
speeess. The United States government has
given it official endorsement by sending around
bv it a pho'nographed address of President
Wilson to his "red brother" which very few
hear, and detailiug a distinguished ofiftcer of
tbe Imdian Service as advance agent and local
manager of the show gotten up for the benefit
of Mr. Wanamaker's picture films. When the
"expedition" arrives, at an Agency the Indian
Agent ie instructed to call in the tribe, turn
out an extra weeks rations from the warehouse,
rash in a .section of the beef herd for slaughter,
and then round up the old coffee coolers and
bums of tbe Agency who don their moth eaten
war bonnnets and old Indian toggery to make
wp the "procession of Indian braves."" It is
a labored revival of the life of twenty-five or
Mty years ago. The progressive and independent Iudians of today are not in it.
Like the museum that is to house its trophies
it simply commemorates a dead past. Except
f*s a commercial scheme the whole enterprise
is a back number.    The "processions" and the
flag x-aisex-s are not the x-eal Indians of today.
It is altogether a make believe play, and that
not for the benefit of history, but as a business
advertisement.    What wonder that the intelligent aud aspiring members of the -'red race"
resent being thus "stuck up befoi-e tbe public to
draw trade for a storekeeper."    And we too,
as citizens with them of these United States,
resent   it that our   government endorses   this
philanthropic tomfoolery    Think of the Indian
braves being drilled to perform the ceremony
of the flag,—'drawing back in awe when first
presented to them, then stepping forward two
paces and touching it reverently, and finally
kissing it and clasping it to their breasts before
hoisting it.'    And what nonsense about signing a "declaration of allegiance."    There are
I stacks   of treaties   at    Washington   from all
] these 189 tribes that have been piling up there
I for the past hundred yearr-.    Think of all this
i posing in the name of citizenship and civili-
i zation for the benefit of a picture show!    It'is
disgusting.
Santee Association Annual Meeting
At Pahas'a, Sept. 6, 1913
Opened with Rev. Louis De Coteau in the
chair and Mrs. Eunice Baskin Secretary.
The Treasurer, Mr. Stepheu S. Jones, made
report of receipts during the year.
At La Plant meeting, Sept. 1912.. . $142 21
Woman's Society of Santee        10 00
Ascension Church       13 16
Henry R. Cloud .#       5 00
Interest at Omaha bank       36 00
$206 37
Expended during the year:
Miss Mavberry, teacher at Santee.. $173 45
To Omaha fund       32 92
$206 37
The officers for the coming year are
President, Eugenia Benjamin, Peever, S. D.
Secx-etary, Mary Likehim, Grosse, S. D.
Treasurer, Lucy Lincoln, Eagle City, Okla.
Vice Presidents:
Bennie Kindel, Oglala, S.D.
Moses T. Edwards, Cutmeat, S. D.
Hugh Chargingbear, Norris, S. D.
Eliza Irving, Grosse, S. D.
Martha Carpenter, Crow Creek, S. D.
Lizzie P. Arthur, Poplar, Mont.
Samuel Allen, Flandreau, S. D.
Louis Baker, Elbowoods, N. D
Peter Bear, Oberon, N. D.
David Merrow, Peever, S. D.
Samuel Renville, Sisseton, S. D.
David Dudley, Greenwood, S. D.
Jessie Frazier, Santee, Neb.
Alice C. Keeler, Fort Yates, N. D.
John Thunder, Pipestone, Manitoba.
Henry Cloud, Winnebago, Neb.
Contributions brought in from
Santee, Neb., by Jessie Frazier   $72 06
Iyakaptapi, by Mrs. Eugenia Benjamin    26 50
Crow Creek, bv Mrs. Eliza Irving. ..     11 15
Mrs. Helen Williams       5 00
Collections     11 00
$125 71
An address by Dr. A. L. Riggs told of the
plans for enlarging our Santee School, aud
gave notice that he will send around to all
the district Santee Associations the question,
whether we will give $550. of our Omaha bank
fund to aid iu building the proposed new school
building-
The meeting was enlivened by a chorus of
Santee pupils and a solo by Philip Frazier.
A Remarkable Indian Marriage Record
At Santee lives Charles Hedges who is an
Indian, 84 years old and in fairly good health.
Sixty-three years ago he married a young woman who is still his wife. For an Indian to
live so loug with one wife is quite unheard of.
Our Meeting at Red Hill
The Annual Conference of our Congregational and Presbyterian Indian churches is a
great affair. Some three hundred travel by
train and fifteen hundred or more come by
wagons. This year the meeting was at Red
Hill, in the valley of the White River, forty
miles west of Chamberlain and seventeen miles
south of the railroad atKeunebec.
When we alighted from the ears a crowd of
Indian teams, wagons, carriages and buggies,
were awaiting the delegates, and all the automobiles of the town were x-eady for service.
The old and the new were oddly mixed up as an
aged Indian woman bareheaded and shawled,
accompanied by her buxom daughters, broad-
hatted aud in up to date dress, whisked away
in a motor car. A beautiful prairie road led to
White River, wUere from its bluffs we looked
down into the picturesque white tented camp,
in the broad valley of the river, surrounding
in a great circle the little Presbyterian church,
the assembly tent, aud the missionary head
quarters at the center.
Even the Indian world moves and, in place
of the old time crier at day-light calling the
faithful to breakfast and prayers, the Indian
band imported from Sisseton went the round of
the camp. Their drum and horns were heard
for an hour as they plodded their way around
the great camp. The next morning and afterwards we noticed that they were furnished with
a baud wagon.
Indians are conservative to the last point.
Perhaps this is the ease always when custom
rules iu place of written constitutions. Written laws may be explained away, but custom is
unchangeable. So when it was proposed to
elect the presiding officers of the assembly at
the close of the meeting instead of the opening,
so that they might have the making of the program of the meeting at which they would preside, it was stoutly resisted and barely passed.
It had been proposed the year before aud had
been rejected without ceremony.
At a camp meeting the weather is an element
of prime importance, but which we have to
take as it comes. At Red Hill a south wind
blew like a sirocco for four days. We were
thankful for the cool of the evenings and mornings. Sunday the Mrind whipped into the north
and blew dust all day, but it was cool aud liveable. At this fall mission meeting we have all
varieties of weather. We remember the first
meeting at Pine Ridge, when the hot south
wind blew sand like a gatling gun. It was
worth one's life to walk down the street. And
when one sat down in the booth, he first had
to scrape off a pile of sand from the board seat.
Theu there was Buffalo Lakes, when we bx-oke
the ice in our wash basins in the mornings,
and Big Lake, near Standing Rock, where a
sleet storm leveled many tents and reduced the
assembly tent to icy strings. And there was
Virgin Creek where the wind threw down a
tent pole of the big tent and cracked the skull
of a minister, and we had to telephone fifty
miles for a surgeon. However, for the most
part, we have had comfortable weather, and
camp life has been enjoyable.
An Indian Manufacturer
On a certain reservation in Nebraska there
is a broom factory with a prosperous Indian
propx-ietor. He raises 20 acres of broom corn
and buys more. He employes two helpers and
has filled orders for 200 dozen brooms at a time
and ships them by the cars. He sells "three sewed" brooms, 24 lbs. to the dozen, for $2.50, and
"five sewed" brooms, 27 lbs. to the dozen, for
$3.50. This Indian manufacturer buys his
broom handles in large lots from Chicago or
St. Louis, does his cox-respondence with printed
letter heads and seems to be enjoying business
prosperity.