As an Indian, I thank God for helping hands that led me step by step, perhaps not far, but at least to where I am now. Had it not been for this, my fate would have been that of my people. The Indian children when transplanted must have friends who will give them advice, support, and encouragement. This will help them on over the difficulties. Small difficulties will seem to them like mountains.
The reservation can never furnish the necessary conditions. The cure must come from association with enlightened Christian people.
“Out of geographical barbarism into geographical civilization and citizenship” is the true war cry for the Indian of today.
It is entirely practical to distribute all Indian children among your families. This has been done with great success.
Four hundred and some odd thousand emigrants land upon your shores annually; in a few years they and their descendants are absorbed and lost sight of. This is because their children have the benefits of the public schools.
I wish that I could collect all the Indian children, load them in ships at San Francisco, circle them around Cape Horn, pass them through Castle Garden, put them under the same individual care that the children of foreign emigrants have in your public schools, and when they are matured and moderately educated let them do what other men and women do—take care of themselves.
This would solve the Indian question and would rescue a splendid race from vice, disease, pauperism, and death. The benefit would not be all for the Indian. There is something in his character which the interloping white man can always assimilate with profit.3
Civilized Arrow Shots from an Apache Indian, 1902
AWAY WITH INDIANS! THEY CANNOT BE CIVILIZED!
So says the frontiersman.
My words are not for this man.
He does not justify all there is in civilization.
The Indian is human; if cheated, wronged and misused, he will justly resent it, the same as the white man.
I deny that the Indian is more of a savage than the white man.
I deny that the scalping knife and the tomahawk are more significant of great savagery than the sword and gattling gun of the pale face.
Can the Indian produce such destructive and cruel implements of warfare as the monstrous canon and that death-dealing explosive, the Lydite?
Yet this same man will use every means to influence the Government to appropriate large sums of money for the reservations in his state or territory, as if he were actually the redman’s almoner.
The white man looks after his own interest. Why not allow the Indian to do the same thing?
The Sympathetic Plea
“POOR THINGS! DO NOT CHANGE THEIR CUSTOM ALL AT ONCE. BRING THEM INTO CIVILIZATION BY GRADUAL PROCESS.”
This sounds very much like the saint who cut his dog’s tail off little by little so as not to hurt the dear dog too much. This kind and gentle ideal is a sham.
Four hundred years of gradual taking away his savagery and giving him your civilization have elapsed, and what are they?
A caged being, worse than his forefather ever dreamt of.
Idler, beggar, gambler, pauper, ruined!
Let us stop this destructive process by the quickest way possible. For the sake of their future, the Indian heart of today must be broken.
The Church
“TO CHRISTIANIZE THE INDIANS WE MUST SECLUDE THEM BY THEMSELVES AWAY FROM THE VICES OF CIVILIZATION AND SEND MISSIONARIES TO THEM.”
A prominent divine has said: “If I were the devil and wished to do the most devilish thing, I would not destroy the churches, but I would corrupt them.”
The reservation is a devilish method of Christianizing my people.
I believe in missions.
Not one missionary to thousands of Indians, but thousands of missionaries to one Indian, which they would get if brought into the midst of civilization.
The Educator’s View
“BUILD MORE SCHOOLS ON RESERVATIONS, SO THAT THE INDIAN PUPILS MAY BE AN OBJECT LESSON FOR THEIR PARENTS, TO CONVINCE THEM OF THE PRACTICALITY OF EDUCATION.”
I say very few Indian schools are needed in the United States.
Or, rather no Indian school is necessary, when the public school, the anchor of our educational system is available.
To me to deprive the Indian children of this anchorage is an insult.
You may as well say, “you are an inferior race of children, we do not want you in our public schools.”
In Indian schools, Indians teach Indians.
When you allow their ignorant parents to decide for their children’s welfare, you only encourage the blind to lead the blind, and Indians will remain Indians for ages to come.
If the public school is good enough for all other races, why not for the true American children?
The Sentimentalist
“IT IS CRUEL TO SNATCH THE INDIAN PAPOOSE AWAY FROM THE MOTHER’S BOSOM AND TRANSPORT IT TO A DISTANT SCHOOL. IT SHATTERS PATERNAL RELATION.”
How inconsistent you are!
For your children’s education you will sacrifice their absence from home ties, you will send them across the water.
What for?
So as to give them the best schooling.
And yet you weep and stand in the way of the Indians’ children when a few are passing you to go to the Eastern schools.
The Indian children of today are in a stage of crisis.
Why not treat them as you do your own children?
Stop this exceptional policy.
When you have done that, you have done your duty.
Rumors from the Indian Service
“WE OUGHT NOT SEND INDIAN CHILDREN EAST TO EDUCATE THEM; THE CLIMATE WILL KILL THEM.”
When all other arguments have been exhausted to keep Indians Indians, then the weather comes in very appropriately.
The Indian seems to be almost persuaded.
“Climate will kill your children. Climate will kill your children,” comes like a message of death to this superstitious race.
The time has come when the Indian must take his chances with the white man.
How little do the eastern people take into consideration the vicissitudes and dangerous regions of our globe when their pockets and education are involved.
It is as reasonable to implore the Yankee to stay where he was born as to tell the Indian pupils not to go where they can get the best education and thus accomplish the most for themselves.
But the statement is not true. Death in greater proportion than at the remote school comes to the Indian on his reservation in all its lines of disease, simply because on the reservation he is not and cannot be as well protected or helped when attacked.
The Showman and the Anthropologist
“LEAVE THE INDIANS ALONE. IT IS BEAUTIFUL TO PRESERVE THE TRUE CHILDREN OF NATURE AS OBJECT LESSONS TO STUDY.”
By blinding the Indians, Buffalo Bill has wrongly educated the public.
To leave the Indians alone as curiosities and studies may be well enough for the showman and the anthropologist.
But what about the Indian?
The standard of a splendid race is degraded by it.
He deserves a better fate than to be redecked with savage attire, only to be ridiculed and jeered at for mercenary and scientific purposes.
Do away with your ignorance of the Indian.
Help him to escape the deadly fate of the reservation system.
Learn of him, as he will of you.
Then you will develop the man and not the savage, the citizen and not the pauper.
This is my cry to all the world for my people.4
The Indian Dance, 1902
Thirty years ago among the primitive Indians, I participated in Indian dances.
Taken captive by another tribe then, it fell to my lot to be an object for a dance.
Twenty years later as Government physician I witnessed many dances in as many tribes, from the East to the West coast.
Therefore, I write reality and facts, not from romancing
and imaginations.
The primitive Indian dance was a religious rite—the highest social and spiritual function.
It was the token of good friendship, a gathering for peace and happiness.
It united mind to mind, and heart to heart.
It was to show their gratitude to nature, and sing peace to the world.
It was where the sick were cared for.
The maid and her lover were given in marriage.
Here the competitions for prizes were carried on, and a general feast was enjoyed by all.
Spiritually, the medicine man preached the highest morals that a human heart could give to its beloved ones.
The dance camp was broken up, the participants strengthened in mind, body, and soul.
Reservation Indians are not the primitive Indians.
They are corrupted and blinded to the noblest ideals of their forefathers.
They are graduates of the school whose teachers have been the cowboys, soldiers, and the worse element of frontier life.
There is something radically wrong in the present Indian dances.
The Indian, being brought up from childhood in this poisonous atmosphere, gets the idea it is not wrong, just as a saloon keeper thinks his business is legitimate.
The child of nature does not know the end of his folly.
The aged may enjoy the occasion, but they do it at the expense of their children who will unavoidably suffer.
It kills time and the Indian.
It generally takes days to prepare for the Fandango.
To dance it, requires several days and nights.
It consumes that many precious days to recuperate from the effects of the debauchery.
At this time the unusual excessive smoking and exposure produces sickness.
The mortality is greater.
If the object of dancing were only to dance to commemorate the old days, I would be the last loyal Indian to speak against it.
Not so!
It is a general holiday for all sorts of vice.
Indians are in the gambling stage, which whites have forced upon them as a pre-requisite to civilization—a danger line that the Indians cannot see.
In the darkness of the night, secreted behind a bush, a stone, or a wigwam are two young souls.
Some affection may be there, but passion predominates.
The Gospel is dead.
Satan has fully sway.
Early dawn finds the Indian rolled up in a branded U.S.I.D. blanket, fast asleep until noon.
Afternoon, in the tents or under the shade of trees scattered here and there in the camp are groups of ten or more women and men playing the devil’s Bible of civilization—cards.
Quarter, half, and one dollar coins flitter and glitter from one hand to another.
If money is scarce, saddles, blankets, or anything equivalent to the stake are wagered.
About four o’clock the horse race!
All horses take part whether the cayuses can run or not. As the saying is, “they are bound to be in it.”
Then on this nature’s level track, no livelier or more enthusiastic participants ever gathered on Harlem Track.
With every race there is a roar, a cry of victory and exchange of money.
From all appearances one would exclaim, “Surely, the Indians are fast getting into civilization.”
Shame on such civilization!
It is demoralizing and fatal for the future generations of the Indians.
I speak with emphasis, as most of our educated Indians do, and declare that the Indian dance today does gross injustice to the character of our people.
It conveys to the public, wrong impressions!
The outburst of savagery, the painted face, the feathered hair, the tomahawk, the scalping knife, the hideous war-whoops, the mutilated body, and eating fat dogs.
It separates the Indian and leaves him an Indian—a foreigner within his own country, which is an undeserved fate; but the inevitable result of the shortsightedness of our boasted civilization.
To us Indians it does not pay.
We must seize on to and hold fast to the standard which we have attained in so brief a period of time.
If we have to work our own way into civilization let it be in the broad and honorable field of competition, right among the enlightened masses, and not by ourselves in the darkness of our ignorance on a reservation.
Amid all these perplexing questions that pertain to the welfare of our people, let the divine utterance be our guide:
“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”5
Flash Lights on the Indian Question, 1902
History seems to convey that America and the Indian were lost and Columbus discovered them. Since then the Indian has met so many “entreating friends,” that much like the poor gold-brick farmer, he is bewildered and at a loss to know what to do. Thus comes the Indian Question.
The Indian Question is a question because we have sidetracked the Indian from the main road to freedom, manhood, and citizenship.
The question today is not what we must do for the Indian, but what the Indian must do for himself as an individual not collectively.
It seems strange we can cheat the Indians but cannot educate them.
To rob a race of their land is bad, but to rob, imprison, and stunt that race morally, physically, and intellectually, what is it?
There was a time when Government bullets killed the Indians. Now it is the Government red tape.
If one one-hundredth of the amount taken to kill the Indians had been used to educate them among the masses of the people of the United States, the Indian question would have been settled long ago.
Civilization ought to develop the good qualities in the Indian and make the Indian a man, and not a better Indian; he is “Injun” enough, already.
Shame on the athlete, who by reason of his strength, tramples on the weak! Our duty is to help our brother man up to our standard of strength. This applies to the Government in its relations to the Indians.
Any methods (it makes no difference how good the intentions might have been or from what source they may have originated) which come between the Indian and civilization are hindrances, and will keep the Indian in the background of progress, a worthless expense and helpless.
Gradual processes of civilizing the Indians might do, if they were to live as long as Methuselah and the white man’s greed could be suppressed for the same length of time.
Reservation is “hell,” a poisonous tank where vice and corruption predominate and all Indians are corralled and stamped U.S.I.D. The United States Indian Agent is a little god that has more sovereignty over his subjects than the President of the United States or the Sultan of Zulu.
The reservation system is a civilized bluff, a painted tissue paper partition that debars the Indian from his natural rights. Why has this been done?
The Government method of treating the Indian is contrary to the constitution of our country, which grants every one the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
One hundred and sixty acres and money annuities do not and will never equip the untutored Indian to compete with the outside world any more than such gifts to a child.
“Mother, may I go out to swim?”
“Yes, my darling daughter:
Hang your clothes on a hickory limb,
But don’t go near the water,”
Yes, poor Brother in Red!
Be civilized!
But don’t come near civilization!
The sanction is there, but the opportunity is denied.
Let the same agencies which aid the white man be applied to the Redman. Why not?
To Christianize the Indians, one missionary to thousands of Indians is not enough. Rather let there be thousands of missiona
ries to one Indian, as is the case when they go out into civilization.
Five years of schooling is not education for the Indian boy any more than for the white boy. Distant schooling, away from civilization, is worse than a failure. Teachers are Indianized before they civilize the Indians.
Six hours inside of a school house on a barren soil and eighteen hours in an Indian camp never has and never will civilize the Indian boy or girl.
Of the two schools, Indian school and public school, the public school is better for the Indian as well as for the other races.
The marked difference between an eastern school and a reservation school is in one the papoose gets ideas of things outside of the reservation, and in the other, no ideas of these things.
Give the Indian a chance where the chances are best—in the heart of civilized light—the sooner the better.
It is absurd to judge the Indian as savage. Our civilized savagery is more brutal and destructive than the Indians.
Misrepresent the Indian and you will cause him to be misunderstood. That is what Buffalo Bill and many Indian novels do.
In the large cities of the United Sates the Indian is so scarce that when seen he is branded as a foreigner. What an audacity!
We claim the Indians are human, yet we treat them as though they were incapable of yielding to human treatment.
White people’s frequent question: “Are the Indians capable of grasping our ways?” Such ignorance is inexcusable.
Say “Indian” to your children; they shudder and run as though they heard and saw a rattlesnake. They imagine a savage monster that roams over the plains and through the forest.
Present an educated Indian, cultured and refined, and the white man experiences a sad disappointment, because this Indian gentleman is not painted and feathered from scalp-lock to moccasin.
We may appropriate great sums of money; we may send teachers and missionaries to the reservations; he is still a reservation Indian, a ward of the Government. To change him get him out bodily. Let him sink deep into civilization and become a very part of our civilization.
Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press Page 18