You may corral cattle, you may push the button to move your machinery; but the Indian is a man. He will not be subservient to your whims. He will and must have his rights.
In order to make the Indian children like your own children, you must treat them like your own children. Stop this exceptional business, because they are Indians. It is destructive and fatal. When the Indian is once among civilized people, to return to the reservation is to fall back on the blanket. Indians, “Get you out!”
Be out and out for your manhood and womanhood, and stay out!
It is all outs.
I speak out of my good heart.6
How America Has Betrayed the Indian, 1903
On this most interesting occasion in Chicago’s remarkable history it is well to pause and consider the great question of the true brotherhood of man.
The Indians have attracted a great deal of attention. I hope it has been a right education for the public, but I fear you went there to see the feathers.
You went there to see the painted face.
You went there to see the savage dance, to hear the war whoops; in other words, you went there to see the real Indian with all of his paraphernalia—a mere curiosity and “nothing more.”
To me it represented cheated possibilities, imprisoned and stifled latent powers; representatives of a race that have been crippled and deluded with misapplied methods.
If the Indians had only to review a path of progress as Chicago is doing, then there would be cause for rejoicing in the reunion of the descendants of the tribes who first occupied the site of Chicago.
Then there would be a deep significance in the mock war dance; then the shriek and loud war whoops would put the Indians of 1803 to shame, and the powwows would be supplemented with a barbecue in token of prosperity and justice to the Indians.
But, alas! such is not the situation.
The Indian has not made any progress.
He is the real Indian plus the vices of civilization that make him worse than his progenitor.
You have abused your mission, and in the light of your promises and power to do, you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
And, taking advantage of his ignorance, you have left him where his last state is little better than his first.
The great hindrance to the right road for the Indians comes from the sentimentalists and literature on the Indian question.
The one thought it was too cruel to change their condition all at once and the other teaches that the Indian has ways of his own better for him than civilization’s.
Reservations are prisons, the fiendish device of so-called civilization for the Indians; while the prisoner is kept in his cell, the mere placing of furniture therein and supplying him with necessary food and raiment leave him none the less a prisoner still.
No! You must first get him out of his prison cell.
Make him know that he is a free man and then surround him with good environments.
The law of nature is expansion and growth. The first step towards civilization of the Indian is to place him geographically so that he can commingle with the conquering race, in the same manner and to the same extent that natives of foreign countries have become a part of the people in general in our country.
Would anybody deny that whatever progress the negro has made has been due to the extent to which he has associated with those by whom he was once held as a chattel?
Indian schools for Indians are roundabout ways to dodge the public school systems and to encourage the Indian children to remain Indians as long as possible.
Carlisle school is an Indian school, but the commander at that institution has been and is an unceasing advocate of the public schools for the interest of his children.
It is as incongruous for the government to maintain Indian schools for Indians as it would be German schools for Germans.
Why should it be tolerated exclusively for the Indian?
I would not object to remain as an Indian and live as an Indian for ages to come were you to agree to take my ways and let me lead the trail of life. But when you monopolize all and leave me nothing I object.
On the reservation, its limited sphere, we roamed at will, thinking all would be well because the white man said so. Have you not cheated us out of our birthright?
Maybe you have intoxicated us to sleep, and, Rip Van Winkle like, we came back after many years and see the real as though after a dream.
I see your houses, tall as the mountains.
With the speed of the wind you fly over our forefathers’ hunting grounds with your iron horses.
For riches you dig into the earth.
Your canoe on the lake is wonderful.
Your talks go miles and miles, and you have gathered the mysterious lightning to give you light.
All these are things our medicine man could not do.
Now we see why you have been so good to us.
During all these years you have been toiling selfishly at everything with the light of the civilization of the past and you may well be jubilant at our expense. Tell me, is it not worse than robbery to make us blind and then take everything we possess?
O! for a hundred years to go back and see as we do today.
We would warn our children here never to lose sight of the white man.
We would urge them to go side by side with the white papooses and outstrip them if they can.
Ah! if we are hindrances to our children, the hope of our race, we shall stand aside and let them take everything of your Christian civilization.
We will have no fear because they will do their duty to honor their people and country. Does not the Great Spirit say today, as of old, “Let my people go?”7
Charles Alexander Eastman (Santee Sioux)
Charles Alexander Eastman, or Ohiyesa (The Winner, 1858–1939), was born near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. His father was Sioux, and his mother, the daughter of a well-known army officer and granddaughter of Chief Cloud Man of the Sioux, died shortly after his birth. Eastman lived on the Santee Sioux (Dakota) reservation in Minnesota until, at the age of four, he fled with his grandmother and uncle to Canada following the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862. There he was raised by his grandmother and trained by his uncle to assume the life of a Dakota hunter and warrior. Meanwhile, Eastman’s father, Jacob, whom the family presumed dead as a result of the Mankato mass execution, was imprisoned. While in prison Jacob adopted the markers of civilization—he wore white man’s clothing, converted to Christianity, and learned English—and decided that his son should “learn this new way” of life. When Eastman was fifteen his father reappeared to take him to a tribal settlement in Flandreau, South Dakota. Jacob convinced Charles to attend the Santee Normal Training School. After leaving the boarding school Eastman continued his education at Beloit College, Knox College, Kimball Union Academy, Dartmouth College, and Boston University Medical School, where he became one of the first licensed Native American physicians.
In November 1890 Eastman became the government physician at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Eastman cared for those Lakota who were injured during the massacre at Wounded Knee. In 1893, after resigning his post, he moved to St. Paul and launched his literary career by publishing in St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks. That same year he delivered a speech, “Sioux Mythology,” at the World Columbian Exposition. Soon thereafter Eastman became a representative of the International Committee of the YMCA and served as their field secretary. He also worked briefly as an outing agent at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, became a spokesman for the Boy Scouts, and was a founding member and officer of the Society of American Indians.
During a literary career that spanned almost thirty years, Eastman wrote ten books and published widely in periodicals. His nonfiction prose appeared in national magazines like St. Nicholas and Harper’s. He also published in venues geared toward those interested in Indian reform, namely, Carlisle’s school newspapers and the SAI’s magaz
ine, the Quarterly Journal (later the American Indian Magazine). None of Eastman’s writings reprinted here appear in Michael Oren Fitzgerald’s 2007 edited collection, The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): Light on the Indian World. (Eastman, Indian Boyhood, 246; Littlefield and Parins, Biobibliography: Supplement, 206; Peyer, American Indian Nonfiction, 368–71)
An Indian Collegian’s Speech, 1888
At a recent meeting of the Jamaica Plains Indian Association, the most novel attraction was the speech of C. A. Eastman, a full-blooded Sioux Indian, graduate of Dartmouth, and now a medical student at Boston University. He is described as “a young man of fine physique, with the admirable air of reserved force characteristic of his people.” This was but his second attempt to speak in public, and he held his audience in close attention. He said:—
I will speak of my father, rather than myself, for he has been of more importance to my race, and is to me the model of a strong and good character. He was once a warrior, who painted his face and scalped his enemies; but after the great Sioux war of twenty years ago, he was imprisoned for four years in Davenport, Iowa; and there he embraced Christianity, through the influence of the missionaries, Williamson and Riggs, who taught him to read the Bible in the Indian language and to write. My father surrendered himself voluntarily to this imprisonment because his near relatives were either there or probably dead in the war.
As a baby, I found myself in my grandmother’s care in the British dominions, and I grew up under the impression that the whites had killed my father and brothers, and my great desire was to “get at” one of these fellows and be even with him. When I was five years old, a tall Indian in citizen’s dress appeared before me, saying he was my father and had come hundreds of miles from his Dakota home to take me back with him and make a Christian man of me. I wondered what that might be. Every morning my father read his Bible, and my grandmother adopted his belief; but my uncle would have none of it. As I was generally off roaming, I heard little of all this discussion, and so I well remember the impression my father’s prayers first made upon me. It was at our first camping-ground by a beautiful lake, at sunrise on our way back to Dakota. The waterfowel were about and the birds went singing through the air, but far sweeter to me was my father’s voice as he sang “Ortonville.” I asked who this Jesus was that he sang about. He replied that it was a man from above, through whose influence he had come to make a man of me.
When my father was released from prison he was determined not to be confined on a reservation, so he went to Yankton to cut wood for the Missouri steamers, eventually hoping to take up land for a farm of his own. He was joined by twenty others and they took homesteads at Flandreau and sold ponies to obtain oxen.
Thus I found him established when I came back with him, but nothing could overcome my terror of my white neighbors, who would come in to exchange work; I would run in the barn. My father was anxious we should know the English language, and would always speak the few words he knew to spur us on. My older brother, a graduate of Beloit College, now teaches in Mr. Alfred Riggs’ Indian Normal School at Santee, Nebraska.
It is true my people love the chase far better than manual labor, and it is also true that the United States’ promises have been rotten for one hundred years back. I wanted to picture my good father to you tonight to prove that if Indians have land assured to them they will work, and I want to add that one hundred Indian families on the Big Sioux River have just eagerly cast their Republican vote.1
Address at Carlisle Commencement, 1899
It seems to be characteristic of the white people, at least those on the frontier, that when one of them is cornered and at a disadvantage he is apt to use profuse profane language; and it is also characteristic of the old Indian warrior when one is forced to a corner and taken advantage of he will probably give a war whoop. But, as I am not given to either of these characteristics, I have to suppress my feelings after the Major [Richard Henry Pratt] has called me out, especially when I look at the good speakers here ready to address you tonight, and I will simply say a very few words. When one of the Senators, on visiting Congress the other day, asked me whether I was an “anti-scalper,” I happened at the time to be following a lobbyist into his room who was an anti-scalper.
I said, “Most assuredly I am an anti-scalper,” and when I first took that position some twenty-five years ago, I took my blanket and my bag and started from Sioux Falls, in South Dakota, to the Santee Agency up above Yankton on the Missouri River, some one hundred and thirty miles, on foot in search of education. In those days, this school having been established only about twenty years ago—the Government was not so generous to the Indian, and the Government was not so sympathetic as it has been since furnishing education, and I had to hunt for my education over the prairie. That accounts for my not being here at the Carlisle School.
But I want to say that the Sioux is not going to be left behind because he once evidenced roughness, atrociousness and barbarous qualities. Now my friend here, the physician, medicine man, or whatever you may call him thinks that the Apaches were beneath all civilization, and all that, but the Sioux were equally as bad when on the war path, yet they had those redeeming qualities that all races have. God has made them emotional, religious, and with proper training and under favorable environments they can develop those talents and those pure thoughts that are common to all men, and they will prove to be just as trustworthy, good people as any race.
I have found in the last few years of my traveling among the Indians a boy or girl here and there who had been instructed here, true to the principles that the Major and his corps of good teachers had instilled into their hearts and inculcated in their minds from the day of their arrival here until the day they left, and although sometimes at a disadvantage with no encouragement, and sometimes surrounded by unfortunate circumstances, they stick to the instruction that the Major gave them—“Stick to the truth,”—and today many of them are becoming self-supporting men and women.
There are times when I sit down by the camp fire that my heart swells. There are times when girls come to me and ask me for advice what they shall do under certain circumstances, and tell me a pathetic story. I say:
“What did Major Pratt tell you?”
She would reply that he told me to be truthful, be steady, persistent, stick to a position and push right on; live an honest life. And I say to her, “That is right.”
There is not a person living but has their storms; but has their hard weather to go through; but has to pass through deep rivers; but has to ascend rough mountains, and those who are not able to do these things had better never have lived. The survival of the fittest is almost as the Bible among all races, and in order to be equal to the great privilege of citizenship of these United States, we must use our own muscle, use our own mind and put our shoulder to our responsibilities wherever we are, whether among Indians or among white people.
There is but one Heaven over us and one earth under us. Heaven gave us light and Heaven gave us rain, and gave us all the food necessary for us so that we were well provided for before the white man put his foot upon this country. We didn’t lie idle: we chased our game from early morning to late at night, and we never stopped until we carried our game back to the tepees or wigwams to feed our wives and children. It is exactly the same thing today; we are in very different circumstances, but we must not lie idle. We must strive to overcome the prejudices that exist against us.
You must not think that our ancestors were indolent, thoughtless, aimless, without ability and purpose, that our people don’t have just as high aims and ability as you white people have today. Sometimes I think that our people have purer aims, when I see the aims of a great many office seekers that you have here who seek by mercenary means to bring about their purposes. I think our aims are freer from mercenary motives and no office seeking can change it.
I want to say to you that what this school is doing and has done we Indians will never realize, and when the Major is go
ne I hope and pray, that the seed which he has sowed may develop one hundred fold, and that those who have been taught here may develop into leaders among our people. God has produced some of the greatest men in the history of the world out of the poorest parentage; men who founded great nations; men who overcame difficulties; and I still longingly hope that some of these dark faces over here, young men and young women, may look to that and may have purer and higher ideals and press steadily onward and upward, that we may some day take a distinctive part in the great civilization of this western nation.2
The Making of a Prophet, 1899
“Ogalallas, pray to the Great Mystery! An Evil Spirit is enveloped in yonder cloud.” The speaker was a “Medicine Man” of savage repute, and the cloud to which he pointed was at the least an unusual sight. It had all the appearance of a cyclone, and it was swiftly approaching their encampment.
The warning was quickly heard, and the Ogalalla camp became a scene of turmoil. The people ran hither and thither, scarcely knowing which way to turn; some leading a child by the hand while another was carried on the back. Dogs were baying and ponies neighing shrilly as they wildly galloped along.
In the midst of it all an old retired brave with scarcely a garment upon his body, which was painted black, was seen calmly riding around the inside circle of the rows of teepees, singing a “Strong heart” chant. There was something solemn and mysterious about his conduct, yet there was no time for conjecture or questions. He paid not the least heed to the general terror of the camp. If someone there had reflected even for half a minute he would have clearly understood the old man’s action, for the Indian customs are familiar to all the people. But see what those old “Medicine Men” are doing on the outskirts of the camp. Each one is holding a huge, filled pipe with the mouthpiece foremost pointing heavenward. Some are singing Medicine songs, others are crying in a sing-song fashion, and still others are devoutly praying to the “Great Mystery” to turn aside the course of the “drunken Thunder Bird,” which is apparently about to devour them with all their possessions.
Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press Page 19