The Word Carrier of Santee Normal Training School (Santee, Nebraska), 1915-01 - 1915-02

              The Word Carrier
of Santee Normal Training School.
VOLUME  XLIV
HELPING- THE RIGHT, EXPOSING THE WRONG.
NUMBER 1
SANTEE, NEBRASKA.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1915
THIRTY CENTS PER YEAR
Our  Platform
For Indians we want American Education! We need
American Homes! We want American Rights! The result
0fwhich is American Citizenship! And the Gospel is the
Power of God for their Salvation !
Good Bird The Indian
This is the title of a unique and valuable little book of eighty pages written by Gilbert L.
Wilson and published by the Reveil Company.
It is the biography of a Hidatsa Indian of
Fort Berthold'Reservation, North Dakota.
During seven summers Mr. Wilson has
been pursuing anthropological studies in
that region witb Edward Goodbird as his
helper and interpreter. And the bits of
personal history, Indian life, and Indian
beliefs gathered on the road and in the
camp have been woven into a complete story
with everything in its proper sequence and
value. Goodbird himself could not have
told bis story at any one time with srch
completeness and order, yet this is his own
story, made possible by the skill of a trained
observer and historiau. It is also finely illustrated by his brother Frederick N. Wilson.
The thoughtful Christian man wishes to know
what the Indiau thinks. While the crowd of
gawpers who visit Wild West shows look upon
him only as another kind of wild animal. But
th'- man who looks upon the Indian as a brother
man believes in him as an intelligent being.
Often our conceit in our own ideas and ways of
thinking makes us unable to understand how he
looks at the universe, and attributing to him
our own ideas we miss making connection with
him. Then our efforts to help him are futile
and disappointing.
We have idealized the Indian iu two opposite ways. Either we have condemned him as
a brute, destitute of religious aspiration, or we have lauded him as an
unsophisticated angel who could
introduce us to the kingdom of
heaven. As we have followed one
or the other of these lines, barbarity or sentimental folly has characterized our treatment of him.
To those who wish to know why
it is difficult for an Indian to been me a Christian   or to remain a
Christian after becoming nominally one, the chapters "Gods"  and
"Indian beliefs" will bring light.
Other conditions being favorable,
as they are not always, he is not
adverse to accepting the white man's god and
bringing Him iuto bis Pantheon.    But it is entirely another proposition when he understands
that he is to worship no other god than Jehovah.    As Paul said of the heathen world of his
day:  "There are gods many and lords many,"
So is it in the   Indian's world; and  it  goes
against  everything that seems natural to him
to conceive of only "One God, the Father, and
one Lord, Jesus Christ."
This admirable book has one defect. It
drops out of sight tbe barbarities of the sun-
dance and other occasions of self immolation
recorded by Catlin and others. For this Mr.
Wilson is not responsible. As we happen to
know, his book was written true to life and
fact, but was censored by the women of the
Council of Women for Home Missions who
wished to use it in their mission reading circles.
They thought these accounts improper reading
for their young people. It was a great mistake.
Our white young people are not all white liver-
ed. They can respond to heroism even though
manifested in a most misguided way. And
they need to be stirred ta emulate its spirit.
Who of our Christian Endeavorers would do so
much as a Hidatsa Indian did to secure com
munion with  bis  God*?    And as a  matter of I
missionary propaganda bow inane this censor- !
ing.    If we must make paganism appear lovely
before we can "neighbor" its followers, what
incentive is there for christianizing the heathen.
Why trouble  them, or take the  trouble ourselves!    There is already too much   idealized ;
Indian litex-ature afloat.    It raises  no  money
and sends no missionaries.    The women of the
A Bible Class of Young Men's Christian Association Indian  Workers
Council of Women for Home Missions should
be ashamed of their folly.
The most significant words of tbe book are its
last, when Goodbird, after recounting his material prosperity, the outlook for his children,
his friendships among the white people, and
above all the fact that each year he knows God
better, says: "I am not afraid. "
With him now stands throughout the Indiau
country a growing company of serious minded,
industrious, God fearing Indians belonging to
the new era, who look the future in the face
with a clear eye and keen expectation. These
for the most part are the product of the mission
Goodbird The Indian, His Story told by himself to
Gilbert L. Wilson. Illustrated by Frederick N. Wilson.
Fleming H. Reveil Company Publishers, New York
and Chicago.   Cloth, 40 cents; paper, 25 cents.
Members of an Indian Young Men's Christian Association Convention Playing Shinny
schools. They are the hope of their people.
The Christian churches should be proud of them,
and stand by them and the Christian schools
that have made them possible.
Incidentally the book is a fine proof of the
success of Missionary Hall's forty years work on
the Fort Berthhold Reservation. Re\. Charles
L. Hall, D. D. was the first resident missionary
among that people. He chose a hard field;
triply hard because the population belonged to
three different tribes speaking three quite different languages, the Mandan, Ree, and Hidatsa
or Grosventre Nor was the field any the easier
because it had for a century been exploited by
travelers and artists. Yet now prayer to tbe
Only True God, through Jesus Christ His Son,
is offered daily in the three languages. Many
have learned to live noble lives; and many, both
of those living aud those who have passed beyond, will shine as stai-s in the firmament when
Jehovah makes up his jewels.      %
A Santee Graduate
The Society of American Indians has just awarded the first prize in its annual essay contest to
LucyE. Hunter, aWinnebago Indian who is now a
member of the senior class at Hampton Institute.
"The higher academic training for the Indian"
was the title of the first-prize essay. Mr. Arthur
C.Parker, the secretary-treasurer of the Society,
warmly commended Miss Hunter for the splendid argument she had presented.
Mrs. Theodore Foster Riggs
Ida Rudolph Smith Riggs, wife of Dr. Theodore Foster Riggs, died in the hospital at Pierre,
S. D., Friday morning, Feb. 5. She had been operated on for appendicitis six days before, complications set in, and her life could not be saved.
Dr. Riggs has been established as a surgeon
in Pierre for several years, and it was there
that he brought his wife immediately after their
marriage in Nova Scotia ou January 1,1914.
In this one year Mrs. Riggs by her sweet
personality had wou her way into the hearts
of many, aud the whole community has been
afflicted by her death.
Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Riggs were with
their sou at the hospital when the end came.
Suuday morning a brief but very beautiful service was held in the Congregational
Church at Pierre.   Dr. Smith, pastor of the
church, made uo remarks, but by request
limited the service to tbe reading of scripture, aud from poems selected by the family,
among   them   verses  from   Longfellow's
"There is no flock, however watched aud
tended", and from Whittier's "Tbe etex-nal
goodness".    A quartet sang the two hymns,
"Our God, our Help in ages past," and "When
winds are raging,'' and the congregation joined
at the close of the sex-vice in the hymn "Father,
whate'erof earthly bliss."    Then the body was
taken to Oahe and laid to rest.    At the grave
Dr. Thomas Riggs spoke a few words, Dr. Smith
prayed, and allsaug the evening prayer, "Now
the light has gone away."
An Indian on the Reservation System
If you help men most by leading them to
help themselves, awakening in them some form
of aspiration and endeavor, then you do them
corresponding great social injury
when,   by your help, you benumb
the spix-it of wox-k and self-help.
For many years we have x-eceived
everything free—free school, free
transportation, free board and lodging, free clothing.    The result has
been just what any people so treated would show—race inertia.   The
wonder is, not that only comparatively few Iudians make good with
their education after all the labor
spent, but that auy make good at
all.    Other races have the spur of
necessity that drives them on.    In
the actual struggle for a livelihood
they discover and  learn things  of which we
never dream.    The reservation, confining the
people as it did, tended to narrow and circumscribe the thought life of the race.
Our status as wards of the nation would
cease tomorrow, however, if we showed ourselves proficient in our economic problems. The
rate of the issuance of patent-in-fee, and all
that this implies, is based upon our individual
ability to produce economic goods. We must
regard hard labor as our salvation. The logic
of events has brought us to a position v. here we,
too, must labor in the grime and dust of life.
So long as we crowd the Government schools,
where everything is given free, so long will our
status as wards continue. I acsert that in a
country of so great and multiplied facilities for
schooling, all our Indians now in Government
schools can earn their own education. There
is no place in the land where the white people
will not give a friendly push to the Indian who
strives. What costs you something you prize
and you thirst for more.—Henry Roe Cloud, an
address at the Mohonk Conference.
Santee is snowbound. It gives us the all too
familiar feeling of being quarantined, without
however its attendant anxieties. As we
measure the snow drifts on all sides we wonder
if they can completely disappear before the
Fourth of July! ^