Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press

by Jacqueline Emery

  Just at this moment the hunter stepped on a dry twig which snapped loudly as it broke, the mother bear took alarm and down she scrambled to the ground, followed by the older cub and then all three quickly disappeared among the bushes near by.

  At dusk when the evening fires were lighted the hunter came home. He entered his wigwam and put his gun in its accustomed place, then took his seat by the fireside. The wife gave him a look of silent inquiry as she paused in her work of cooking the supper, which he solemnly answered by saying, “I am not going to shoot bears any more; they are human beings like ourselves.”4

  Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai)

  Carlos Montezuma, or Wassaja (Signaling, ca. 1866–1923), was born in Arizona. As a young child, he was captured by the Pimas and sold to a photographer. He attended public schools in Chicago and New York and earned a degree in medicine from the Chicago Medical College in 1889. He worked as agency physician in the Indian Service; from 1894 to 1896 he served as resident physician at Carlisle. He later returned to Chicago, where he worked as a private physician. For a brief period he was engaged to Gertrude Bonnin.

  Montezuma was one of six founding members of the Society of American Indians (SAI) and published numerous essays in its magazine. He founded his own monthly newsletter, Wassaja: Freedom’s Signal for the Indians, in April 1916 after growing dissatisfied with the accommodationist stance of the SAI’s magazine under the editorship of Arthur C. Parker. Montezuma used Wassaja as a medium for launching his critique of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As Montezuma explains in the first issue, Wassaja’s “sole purpose is Freedom for the Indians throughout the abolishment of the Indian Bureau.” (Littlefield and Parins, Biobibliography: Supplement 255; Peyer, American Indian Nonfiction, 341–42; Wassaja, April 1916, 1)

  An Apache, to the Students of Carlisle Indian School, 1887

  I have been thinking what would be best to write that might be a help and encouragement to you in your studies this year.1 I have concluded to relate to you briefly my early schooling and graduation to the degree of Bachelor of Science.

  Now, imagine a small Apache boy in the wilds of Arizona, just as happy as a bird, free from every thought of danger.

  How little did I think one night would separate me from my mother, father, sisters, and brother to live among strangers and be no more free! How little did I realize that this horrid prison life was but the stepping-stone to a better and nobler aim! A brighter morning dawned at last! So with you all.

  In the year 1871 I was taken from the most warlike tribe in America and placed in the midst of civilization in Chicago. My greatest wish was to understand the paper talking, as it was interpreted to me. I often saw boys and girls go to and from the schoolhouse. I had no idea that they all had to be taught, but I had a little suspicious idea of the house. One morning, in April, the boy with whom I had associated persuaded me to come into the schoolyard to play marbles by saying that “I could win piles of marbles if I did!” So I consented.

  The bell rang for the school to begin. I went in and took a seat. The teacher came forward and asked me if I wanted to attend school. I could not speak English; all I could say was “yes.”

  Of course, I naturally said yes to every question. I was taken up to the principal. Here I was questioned and given a small note. This note specified what books I was to get. I left the school feeling as big as ever, and took the note to my guardian. He gave me a few pieces of money to purchase what was necessary. This was the beginning of my education.

  At this time I knew not my A, B, C’s. I could not count nor understand letters. It was but a few months before I could repeat the Lord’s prayer, sing “Precious Jewels” with the scholars, say my A, B, C’s, and count to one hundred, besides write and describe different objects.

  I learned as fast as any of the whites, for the reason that the teacher delighted to instruct me.

  I left this school and went to another one. Here was the best teacher I ever had in a public school. This lady seemed to comprehend the nature of my circumstances and aided me all she could. I made good advancement in my first reader by taking my books home at night, so that I could be instructed there also.

  Most of the reading I committed to memory.

  On account of ill health I left this city and went into the country where for two years I walked two and a half miles to school, and worked to earn my board. This was when I was only nine years of age.

  In the spring of 1877, I went to Brooklyn to school. I was by this time sufficiently advanced to study grammar, arithmetic, and history. At this school I always stood at the head of my class. I did this by staying at home nights to study; not by standing at corners as did some of the white children.

  In the fall of 1877, I returned to Urbana, Ill., where I was assisted in my studies with the view of preparing me for the State University. Inside of one year I passed an examination in geometry, algebra, philosophy, bookkeeping, botany, composition, and physiology.

  I made my way in College by paying and by working for my board.

  In summer I worked on a farm. This I continued for four years, when I graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science in the School of Chemistry.

  During these years I never have doubted that the great problem of the Indian question is capable of solution if the advantages which were open to me could be extended to all Indian youth.

  So with you all. Take care! You are being watched, and time will prove whether you are worthy of being protected and educated.2

  The Indian Problem from an Indian’s Standpoint, 1898

  The reports of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, Indian Agents, school officials, and the missionaries usually create the impression that the Indians are all improving.

  An anxious friend of a patient inquired of the doctor as he passed from his morning call:

  “How is the patient?”

  “Improving,” was the reply.

  Next day she asked again:

  “How is the patient this morning, Doctor?”

  “Improving,” he said.

  And several times again she inquired with the same answer.

  Some days after her last inquiry, she heard of the patient’s death. One of her friends asked her:

  “What did the patient die with?”

  She replied:

  “I guess she died with ‘improvement.’”

  It is high time that a red flag or some other danger signal be hung up on the present Indian policy or the Indians will all die with “improvement.”

  The Indians of today are not the Indians of the past. They have been cut loose from the advantages of barbarism and thus far have not profited by civilization. This makes the Indians of the present more degraded than their forefathers ever were.

  I go back to my childhood and behold coming forth from his wigwam, the stoic warrior of mountain, plain, and forest. He was the child of nature and a true American. Erect in form and strong in presence, his head was carried high, was mantled with long black hair, and decorated with the feathers of the bird that soars above the storm. These were the tokens of strength, prosperity, and happiness. The brow told of purpose, of conscience, or independence, or liberty; the penetrating eye measured the depth of human nature and spoke louder than words. The massive jaw and the clear-cut, firm lips told of natural strength and character; the beads that ornamented his proud neck, placed there by the hand of a woman, were tokens of her pure devotion and love for him when far away.

  This man took in the pure breath of heaven and defied the germ of disease. A strong and steady arm drew the bowstring and brought in the wild game for food and clothing. The girded loin sustained hunger, thirst, and fatigue from early dawn into darkness of midnight. Strong and elastic limbs and fleet moccasined feet, which distance never tired, overmatched the panting deer.

  But the times have changed, and the Indian has changed with them. The picture fades away; the warrior sings the last chant, droops the high bow, abandons personal hope, and gazes with yearning
heart into the face of his children.

  What about the Indian boy and girl? The little warrior and his sister?

  If brought out under the broad daylight of your civilization they might in a higher way outstrip their grandfather and escape the deadly fate of their father.

  Do you know that your whole effort has been and now is crowding them into depths of a state worse than barbarism?

  If you go on and hold down the latent power of the young Indian in the poisonous tank of your present Indian system the new picture will present a form that once glowed with health, scarred by disease; the once open face and piercing eye will be filled with suspicion and fear; clear cut feature is no longer there; the hands that pulled the bow are weakened by misuse and poisoned by vice.

  Nature’s child has fallen.

  From generation to generation you have played upon our ignorance and superstition; you have blinded us. You have made us believe that you were helping us to your ways, but instead of that you are degrading us lower and lower by keeping us as outlawed Indians, and dumping upon us the evils, not the good of your ways.

  We Indians are struggling in the dark to find a way out.

  I have faced your civilized and uncivilized Indian in his own home, have investigated the Indian school system on and off the reservation, and above all have I passed from the Apache grass hut through the different stages of development among enlightened people.

  Now I say more and more every year, I know that you are shortsighted in dealing with the Indian. Your mistakes have made him what he is today.

  My convictions come from intense interest, from personal observation. I have put all my thought into it. Most people have a wrong idea of the reservation; it is not an earthly paradise, nor a land of milk and honey, where the pipe of peace is continually smoked. It is a demoralized prison; a barrier against enlightenment, a promoter of idleness, beggary, gambling, pauperism, ruin, and death. It is a battlefield on which ignorance and superstition are massed against a thin skirmish line sent out from civilization.

  What rational officer would place a few inferior soldiers against an overwhelming number of his foes?

  What right has civilization to do just that in its effort or pretense to deal with the Indian question?

  Do you hold a dog to freeze it to death and place yourself in the same atmosphere? You will freeze before the dog will.

  Five or ten Government employees at an agency or on a reservation can never elevate its thousands of Indians; on the contrary, you send teachers to elevate the Indians and in a few years these teachers become Indians in habits and thought.

  Would you isolate your children on a barren soil?

  Would you surround them with ignorance and superstition?

  Would you put them among idlers, beggars, paupers, and cowboys?

  Would you put around them the bowie-knife, the revolver, and the bayonet?

  Would you deliberately place them away from any civilization whatever?

  If you did all this, would you expect them to be cultured, refined, intelligent, humane, and honest?

  Would you expect to make them industrious and self-supporting citizens?

  No, you would place them in the midst of the most refined, cultured, and educated communities, among English speaking people, where they could come face to face with all the phases of civilized life, so that they might utilize and improve all their faculties. You would do this not merely for five years, but for all of their lifetime, and even then if they turned out well you would have a sense of relief.

  You are blinded and ignorant in the enjoyment of your civilized life.

  In the midst of your refinement and education you are without a trace of an idea of the real facts about the Indian question. You need to have the real conditions forcibly brought to you before you can realize your duty.

  What about the Indian on his fifty-two reservations?

  “But ’tis in vain, the wretch is drenched too deep.

  His soul is stupid and his heart asleep.

  Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross.

  He sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.

  Down goes the wretch at once, unskilled to swim.

  Helpless to bubble up and reach the water’s brim.”

  Shame! upon a Nation to have these fifty-two dark spots in the map, after God has given us four hundred years to wipe them out!

  Yes, the Indians are more degraded than they were when Columbus discovered America.

  Do you know why?

  It is because you have constantly thrown us back upon ourselves, hiding us in the darkness of our ignorance and superstition, because you have sent in more vice than virtue, and you have taken out more virtue than vice.

  You have given the Indians schools on the reservations, and your churches endeavor to Christianize them in their wigwams; the Government tenderly feeds and clothes them; but, in their ignorant, stupid condition; cut off from the light of the world, they will remain Indians for ages to come or disappear through the ravages of idleness and vice. A higher race contributes to these sad conditions.

  Some one has said: “Civilized nations have often become savage when left to themselves; savages left to themselves have never become civilized.”

  Goldsmith says: “People seldom improve when they have no other models but themselves to copy after.”

  It is not enough to make visits like swallows to civilization; that will never do.

  Long range education away from civilization is an utter failure.

  Five years of schooling is not education for the Indian boy any more than for the white boy. It is a mere white-wash education. The boy and girl go home and back to barbarism.

  To accomplish the elevation of the Indian, compulsory education will be necessary. This education should not be on reservations nor near them, but in your public schools. If the choice of my life had been left to my mother and father or myself, I would not be here. Ignorance and the very depths of barbarism would have been my fate.

  You are sympathetic and philanthropic; but your sympathy and philanthropy when exerted to the secluding of the Indians on the reservations are misplaced. It is unjust, it is inhuman; it is criminal to stun the Indian from his birth to his death.

  Would you give a child a few hundred dollars a year to do with as it pleases?

  The Indians in their present state have become children. The intention of the people and the Government towards the Indian is good, but you cannot cancel your obligation by giving him large money annuities. You feed able-bodied men and women; you take away the need of personal effort; you hold them in idleness; you encourage barbarism. Against these methods and this treatment, I protest.

  You may care for the weak and helpless but do not make strong men idle.

  Good people wish the Indians were like themselves but think it cruel to change their relations and habits at once.

  There is a story that goes this way:

  There was a saint who had a dog; the dog had too long a tail. He concluded to cut the poor unfortunate’s tail off little by little so as not to hurt the dear dog too much.

  In much this way we are treating the Indians. Let us stop this destructive policy. Let us cut the Gordian knot by the quickest way possible. Delay is ruin to my race.

  Does anyone say that this race is not endowed by nature with some great qualities which the Caucasian would do well to preserve? Yes, more to imitate?

  Do I hear any one say that the Indian has no fine qualities worth preserving? Do I hear this from anyone? If I do, my words are not for him.

  Why do you not wipe out these dark reservations? Let the Indian earn his living in God’s appointed way, “by the sweat of his brow.”

  This is the only way to liberty, manhood, and citizenship.

  Some of these Indians when brought into competition with white men will die, you say.

  True, but that is what they are doing now.

  But you say: They are wards of the nation and we must deal honor
ably and justly with them.

  What you say is true, and you mean well, but to hear you speak of dealing honestly and justly with the Indian makes an Indian smile.

  You ask what shall be done with the reservations which the nation holds in trust for the Indian?

  I answer, sell them to bonafide settlers.

  What shall be done with the money?

  Use it and more if necessary for the education of every Indian child or youth.

  Where and how would you educate them?

  Away with the reservation schools! Send all children to the most civilized communities, not in large masses, but scatter them in small classes over the United States and place them in the public schools. Let them be brought up in and become citizens of the various states.

  But this would be cruel to take little children from their parents and natural protectors.

  True, I know about that because it happened to me.

  But you ask: What right have we to take away a child from its Indian parents?

  I answer: It is done every day by the courts in the cases of white children whose parents are incapable of taking care of them. You can never civilize the Indian until you place him while yet young (and the younger the better) in direct relations with good civilization. When you do this with judgment, you will succeed and make him a useful citizen of the Republic.

  You have compromised and compromised with the Indians, fed and clothed them as children and have kept them pent up away from civilization. You know the results.

  By leaving the education of the papooses to their ignorant and superstitious parents, you have encouraged the blind to lead the blind. The system is worse than a failure. And worst of all you have done this carelessly and not without good motives.