OCR Text |
Show ADDRESSEE AT OHARLESTON, 8. C. 445 In order to understand the diffieultiea that we, as Indian workers, have h8d to meet it will he necessary to conalder the attitude in wklch the I n h a and t h e e i t e man hme stood to one another. The Indlan III hls w~ld state was a natural ar~sto-crat. He looked with contempt upon the white man, considering him as belonging to an altogether lower order of creation Like the men who came to England with the Conqueror, whose names were written in the doomsday book entitling them to Land and to lives of luxury while others labored, so, I believe, theJndian considered himself a superior being whose ownership of land gave him the ri ht to livewithont labor, which however, it was quite proper and fit that we poor d i t e people should perform. He also despised the whlte man as a soldier. He did not believe in his courage or in his ability to contend with him. One who has had long years of deal-ing with the Indian told me of the remarks that were made by the SIOUXat the time of the Custer massacre. They spoke of the whites as children unfit to bear arms. They a h had a contempt for white morality, and not without reaaon. Them trea-ties had been broken; the white men the were accustomed to see about the reeer-vations twenty get^^ ,ago yere not of mcz a character aa to cornmaod respect for themselves or t e c~vlhzat~ownh ich they represented. Xot only dld they despise the white man, hot they hated him as well. The raee prejudice which is so stmng in the white raee is vastly stronger, I believe, in the Indian race. The children from their earliest infancy are taught to hate the white man. He represented to them all that was bad. It is not strange, then, that progress in the education of Indian children by white p p l e was slow, nor that those who have gone back from our Indian schools to the eat have had a hard fight. They have had to struggle against a race prejudice which had behind it the sanction of religion and was bound up with all the tribal customs of the people. It is a cause for thankfulness that they have done as well as they have. Many a brave fight has heen fought by those students who have gone out from our schools, and the pmgress of the last thirty years is large1 due to the influence they have exerted. Many of them have faded, as was to <e expected. They have been exposed to the sneers of the whites who are not alaaysglad to have intelligence and business abilit increase too rapidly among the Indiana. Little has been said of their stru les to Jo i-ight, or of their successes, but their hilures have been made known tot!% whole country. Annihilation of the Indian is still much more popular with a large portion of the geople of this country than isassimilation. When you talk withawhite m on the orders of a reservation about the education and uplift of the Indian, you,are quite likely to meet with the sort of sympathy which General Whittlesey met wlth in one of his visits to the Crows of Montana. The mugh,Wes@ner who drove the @age coach, said to him, "Are you one of them that 18 tryin to tame these Inhna? Well, S11 tell you how I tame 'em. There's awell in my %ack yard; there ain't no water m it, but there's seven tame Indians in it." It is because the Indian problem is so much the problem of educatin the white man and lifting him out of his barbarism, that it is so dieeonraging. &me yeam slnce a compan of legislators visited an Indjan school on the Sabbath. In his address to the sc%ool one of these lawmakers 8ald; "The Bible tells us that it is ri ht to lift an ox or an ass out of a ditch on the Sabbath day, and I reckon that is wfat the principal of this school is trying to do for us." What long years of struggle it has taken to make the average American citizen believe that there are any pomibilities in his red brother. There are few things more significant aato the attitudeof the ordinary welldreeaed American citizen than to hear his remarks in visitin a class of India;: boys and irh, he speaks of them as though they were "dumb %*wen cattle." Are you civzizedl" was thequest~on put by a visitor to an intelligent Sioux boy. "No," said he, "are you?" When we are asked then, why it is that it takes, 80 lo?g,gto civilize 2@,000 Indians, one answer certainly is, that we have had to wa~to c~vlhzet he wh~tem en about them. The education of the white and red rxes has had to go on together, and I for one believe that C2d has left this red race yith us, th?t he might teach us some Inssons in ri hteousness, in truth, in love, and in self-sacrifice. Many of t%e men in Washington look upon those who come there to plead the cause of the Indian as wild fanatics, who take time which ought to be devoted to the discussion of the currency, the tanff, or the river and harbor bill. And yet year after year they have been obli ed to take the time to diseuas questions concerning the homes and lands and schoofs of native Americans. I believe that no part of the education of our lawmakers at Washin on has been more wholesome and helpful to them or to the country than those gcussions. If there is to come to us as a nation any good out of what seems to many a public calamity in the expansion of our rule over the islands of the sea, I believe it will be, not so much because of our |