OCR Text |
Show by many best acquainted with the matter to be very small, and that auaekers and charlatanry are the uredominant factors. Nevertheless <here are people who think thenatives possess mysterious occult knowledge of the treatment of disease, by simples or possibly by necromancy. Iu the earlier colonial period Indian doctors, conjurers, or medicine men were ealled by the French "jougleurs," and by the English "powwows." Haklyut ealled them magicians, soothsayers, men who 'Loallled devils to their aid." As a class, they comprise in one person the conjuring priest and the dispenser of medicines, acting by pretense under supernatural influence. Trickery and a little sanitary skill, dominated by the grossest superstition, thoroughly uonprogres-sive and closely linked to savagery, make the medicine superstition a formidable rampart of barbarism against the civilization we seek to promote. The weight of tlte most intelligent and trustworthy testi-mony deeideclly favors this view. Whatever virtue there may have been in the simple materia medica of the Indian of former days has largely disapyeared; and shrewd men among them now play the arts of conjurers, and use this influence to impede the progress of thei;. people toward better conditions. In my observation on ninety-three Indian reservations, I have found that the medicine men are the most potentkt1 fwtors in opposition to the education of Inrlian youth. The Indian policemen sent out by the agent to bring in pnpils for the schools, quail under the anathemas of tbese jugglers. Such officers are generally fearless in arresting the greatest erimi~ials, hut cowards in the presence of the conjurers. Special Agent James A. Leonasd bears testimony to this view in a re-port showing the opposition on the Port Hall reservation tp the ednoa-tion of the Indian youth. He says: This mild and lavless element stands boldly against all advanee-meut towards c:ivilizatio~~-against the cnltivation of the soil, tlle rais-ing of aattle, the wenriog of citizen costume, the learning of the English la,ugaage and inonogamy; and it sneers at the orders of the United States Governme~~tI. t besets, jeers, persecutes, and demoralizes students returni~lgfr om the sehoois. It Fortifies Indian momen, pro-verbial fop old-time proehvities, in their determination to keep their daughters from progress, and to bring back any who have taken the first feeble steps toward a diKerent life. It coutinnally flauuts its black flag to terrorize a people long haunted with the darkest snper-stition, and reenslaves those who have in a measure broken away from the old bondaee. Shall this hideous bulwark of barbarism be allowed t,o obstruz the progress of civilization, to uullify the best effbrts of the Gover~~menatn, d cause a11 irn~nelise~ vasteo f expendi- |