Post by mdenney on Jan 21, 2007 21:31:19 GMT -5
intermingling.
Suppose they are to die out. Then our duty is to fit them for their departure.
Our duty is plainer, because the treatment which will fit these people for any
one of these lots will fit them for either of the others.
"After a study of the field, and much conversation with the clergy. I
reached some conclusions and began to lay out settled plans of work. I soon saw
that my work was not to be that of a settled pastor in daily contact with my
flock : but that of general superintendent whose duty it would be to reach the
people through their pastors not so much to do local work, as to make local work
easy for others. The whole field was therefore mapped out into divisions, these
divisions being ordinarily the territory connected with a United States Indian
agency. The special care of each of them was entrusted to one experienced
presbyter, and around him were grouped the Indian ministers and catechists and
others who were engaged in evangelistic work within the division.
"A visit to the Indian Territory and my study of the Indian problem in my
own field convinced me quite early that the boarding school ought to be one of
the most prominent features of the Indian work. I thought that children gathered
in such schools would soon become in their neat and orderly appearance,
increasing intelligence, and their personal testimony dto the loving and
disinterested lives of the missionaries with whom they dwelt, living epistles,
known and read of their wilder brethren. They would form the nuclei of
congregations at the chapels connected with the schools and learn to carry on
with spirit the responses and music of the services. But some will say: "Why
boarding schools? Does not the great Creator indicate in nature that the place
for children is with their parents and in a home?" Yes! but it is left with the
Creator's representatives on earth, namely, intelligent man, to take up and deal
with exceptional cases. The case of the Indian children seemed exceptional.
while it was evident that they could be civilized only through education and
that the older people could be best reached through their children, it was
equally plain that education could not reach the children while they were
running wild and were scattered over vast stretches of country, which could be
traversed only by journeys of ten or twelve days' duration. But what should be
the character of these boarding schools? To take little children from their free
life by compulsion and gather them in large institutions where the most
prominent characteristics are not paternal love and home-like influences, but
the movement of a great machine engenders suspicion, hardens their hearts and
stimulates the natural disposition which any creature has to escape from or to
get the better of those who oppose it. No such boarding schools did I want. I
therefore called for volunteers who would identify their lives with the Indians
and try to establish such boarding schools as, while putting the children
through training, manual, intellectnal and spiritual, would be a practical
reproduction of the act of Christ when he took little children in his arms and
blessed them. Thus grew up the St. Paul's, St. Mary's, St. John's and St.
Elizabeth's Indian boarding schools, which under their respective heads have won
a deservedly high reputation. St. Paul's was the first venture in this line in
Dakota.
"How shall crude Indian life be reduced like crude ore and made malleable?
I soon came to look upon everything as provisional, which if permanently
maintained would tend to make Indian life something separate from the common
life of the country a solid foreign mass indigestible by our common
civilization. I say that because it has been an indigestible mass has our
civilization all these years been trying to vomit it and to get rid of a cause
of discomfort. Ordinary laws must have their way. All reservations, whether the
reserving of land from the ordinary laws of settlement, or the reserving of
the Indian nationality from absorption into ours, or the reserving of old tribal
superstitions and notions and habits from the natural process of decadence, or
the reserving of the Indian language from extinction, are only necessary evils,
or but temporary expedients. Safety for two hundred and fifty thousand Indians,
divided up into several hundred tribes, speaking as many languages, scattered on
about seventy different reservations, among eighty million of English-speaking
people, can be found, if only the smaller people flow in with the current of
life and ways of the larger. The Indians are not an insulated people like some
of the islanders of the South sea. Our work is not the building up of a native
Indian church with a national liturgy in the Indian tongue. It is rather that
of resolving the Indian structure and preparing its parts for being taken up
into the great whole in church and state. From the first, therefore, I
struggled against the notion that we were missionaries to Indians alone and not
missionaries to all men. I pressed the study of the English language, and its
conversational use in the schools, and however imperfect our efforts, the aim of
them has been to break down the 'middle wall of partition' between whites and
Indians, and to seek, not the welfare of one class, or race, but the common
good.
An opportunity for testing these principles occurred not long after my
arrival. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills set a large part of our
Suppose they are to die out. Then our duty is to fit them for their departure.
Our duty is plainer, because the treatment which will fit these people for any
one of these lots will fit them for either of the others.
"After a study of the field, and much conversation with the clergy. I
reached some conclusions and began to lay out settled plans of work. I soon saw
that my work was not to be that of a settled pastor in daily contact with my
flock : but that of general superintendent whose duty it would be to reach the
people through their pastors not so much to do local work, as to make local work
easy for others. The whole field was therefore mapped out into divisions, these
divisions being ordinarily the territory connected with a United States Indian
agency. The special care of each of them was entrusted to one experienced
presbyter, and around him were grouped the Indian ministers and catechists and
others who were engaged in evangelistic work within the division.
"A visit to the Indian Territory and my study of the Indian problem in my
own field convinced me quite early that the boarding school ought to be one of
the most prominent features of the Indian work. I thought that children gathered
in such schools would soon become in their neat and orderly appearance,
increasing intelligence, and their personal testimony dto the loving and
disinterested lives of the missionaries with whom they dwelt, living epistles,
known and read of their wilder brethren. They would form the nuclei of
congregations at the chapels connected with the schools and learn to carry on
with spirit the responses and music of the services. But some will say: "Why
boarding schools? Does not the great Creator indicate in nature that the place
for children is with their parents and in a home?" Yes! but it is left with the
Creator's representatives on earth, namely, intelligent man, to take up and deal
with exceptional cases. The case of the Indian children seemed exceptional.
while it was evident that they could be civilized only through education and
that the older people could be best reached through their children, it was
equally plain that education could not reach the children while they were
running wild and were scattered over vast stretches of country, which could be
traversed only by journeys of ten or twelve days' duration. But what should be
the character of these boarding schools? To take little children from their free
life by compulsion and gather them in large institutions where the most
prominent characteristics are not paternal love and home-like influences, but
the movement of a great machine engenders suspicion, hardens their hearts and
stimulates the natural disposition which any creature has to escape from or to
get the better of those who oppose it. No such boarding schools did I want. I
therefore called for volunteers who would identify their lives with the Indians
and try to establish such boarding schools as, while putting the children
through training, manual, intellectnal and spiritual, would be a practical
reproduction of the act of Christ when he took little children in his arms and
blessed them. Thus grew up the St. Paul's, St. Mary's, St. John's and St.
Elizabeth's Indian boarding schools, which under their respective heads have won
a deservedly high reputation. St. Paul's was the first venture in this line in
Dakota.
"How shall crude Indian life be reduced like crude ore and made malleable?
I soon came to look upon everything as provisional, which if permanently
maintained would tend to make Indian life something separate from the common
life of the country a solid foreign mass indigestible by our common
civilization. I say that because it has been an indigestible mass has our
civilization all these years been trying to vomit it and to get rid of a cause
of discomfort. Ordinary laws must have their way. All reservations, whether the
reserving of land from the ordinary laws of settlement, or the reserving of
the Indian nationality from absorption into ours, or the reserving of old tribal
superstitions and notions and habits from the natural process of decadence, or
the reserving of the Indian language from extinction, are only necessary evils,
or but temporary expedients. Safety for two hundred and fifty thousand Indians,
divided up into several hundred tribes, speaking as many languages, scattered on
about seventy different reservations, among eighty million of English-speaking
people, can be found, if only the smaller people flow in with the current of
life and ways of the larger. The Indians are not an insulated people like some
of the islanders of the South sea. Our work is not the building up of a native
Indian church with a national liturgy in the Indian tongue. It is rather that
of resolving the Indian structure and preparing its parts for being taken up
into the great whole in church and state. From the first, therefore, I
struggled against the notion that we were missionaries to Indians alone and not
missionaries to all men. I pressed the study of the English language, and its
conversational use in the schools, and however imperfect our efforts, the aim of
them has been to break down the 'middle wall of partition' between whites and
Indians, and to seek, not the welfare of one class, or race, but the common
good.
An opportunity for testing these principles occurred not long after my
arrival. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills set a large part of our
