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Post by mdenney on Jan 27, 2007 20:10:12 GMT -5
"After our labors we were all as begrimed and besooted as miners, and, as we talked over our adventures, might have been taken for Ethiopian minstrels canvassing the results of their evening's entertainment.
"The case of the sufferers is very sad. Several of them lost almost their all, that all the result of the hard fight for life which our western pioneers almost always have to wage the first few years of their settlement in their new home. One poor woman had invested her earnings as a school teacher in a millinery establishment. Her goods in the general alarm were snatched from her store to be carried to a safe place and were seized by the hurricane and whirled into the flames or blown over the blackened plains. Another sufferer is a man with a wife and four children, whose house just built and all its contents were entirely consumed. He is reduced almost to beggary. One of our Indian communicants lost two plows, a barrel of pork and a good deal of wearing apparel.
"I invited the people of the town to meet in the evening in the church, the only available place, to devise means for relieving the sufferers. The meeting was accordingly held and immediately followed by divine service, in which only a few words were needed to impress upon all the solemnity of the lesson we had been taught by the events of the day on the uncertainty of human possessions. The subscription for the relief of the sufferers has been quite general and I have promised to solicit help from my friends in the East. . . .
"Our Indians won, by their hearty and efficient efforts to check the flames and save property, the admiration of the most cynical. I shall not soon forget one little episode. Toward the close of the excitement, when our exhausted energies were all being bent to saving the church, an old Indian woman who saw me putting a bucket of water to my lips ran to me and asked a drink, put the bucket to her parched lips and then, stopping first for a moment and putting her shriveled hand in mine with an expression of thankfulness, rushed back to continue her work of beating the flaming prairie. Notwithstanding the exhaustion which the excited efforts of the Indians had produced, a fair-sized congregation assembled in the church in the afternoon, when Rev. Mr. Young presented a class of eight for confirmation.
"There is room for much improvement in these people. They are lacking in persistent application and plant far less of their land than they ought; but they have in a commendable degree resisted the temptation to drink, which their vicinity to a white man's town presents; they have won the reputation of being quiet and peaceable neighbors; their credit is good at the stores, and they are more attentive to their religious duties than most white men are. To one who moves as I do among the barbarous brethren of these Flandreau people and compares the quiet farming life of the one with the dancings and drummings, the indolence and wildness of the others, the condition of the former is full of encouragement."
In the following month, May, 1879, a characteristic scene, in which Bishop Hare took part, was enacted at the Crow Creek Agency. It was described in Anpao for July, 1879, by Mr. S. J. Brown, catechist at Crow Creek, under the heading, "A Heroic Step":
"One of the bravest acts and one of the most interesting ceremonies that I ever witnessed, took place here at the time of Bishop Hare's visitation in May last.
"The hero of what I am about to relate is a Sioux brave and named Iewicaka, or Truth Teller, a nephew of an hereditary chief of considerable note, who died a few years ago, and whose name he bears, and is otherwise closely connected by blood with the 'best families' of the Sioux nation. He is considered one of the bravest of his people and, though a young man of only about thirty-five years of age, is (or was) his chief's--White Ghost's--head soldier, warrior and chief counselor, a position given only to the best and bravest of the tribe. On account of his daring exploits on the warpath and his well-known love for the Indian life and his open warfare against the God of civilization, he was, last winter, made master and keeper of the drum of the Order of the Grass Dance, and thus was he found upon the Bishop's arrival, clothed with all the honors within the gift of his people.
"Upon the occasion of the Bishop's visit and at one of his councils with the Indians who had gathered to hear the great spirit-man talk, Truth Teller, who was present, suddenly arose in the midst of the people and advanced to the front, shook hands with the Bishop, and then, stepping back a few feet and drawing himself up to his full height, in a clear, ringing voice, which at once indicated the deep earnestness and bravery of the man, he declared his purpose to abandon all Indian ways and to adopt those of the white man--to give up all heathen rites and ceremonies and worship only the God of civilization, and then, to attest his sincerity, took from his scalp-lock a war eagle feather--that ensign of bravery and of many years of savagery--and handing it over to the Bishop, said:
"'I give to you this war eagle feather. Take it, and keep it in remembrance of the words of Truth Teller,' and then with an eloquent impressiveness that touched my heart as it never was touched before, he presented the Bishop with the drum of the Order of the Grass Dance, and continued, 'I part with the feather and the drum and all Indian ways forever, and with them give to you my body and my soul.'
"The next important step in this interesting man's career was taken Sunday, June 29, while he was present at a Missionary Conference assembled by the Bishop at the Yankton Agency, when he was, in an impressive ceremony, admitted a catechumen. The Bishop met Truth Teller and his witness at the door of the church and addressed to the former the following questions, to which he answered affirmatively:
"'Dost thou believe that the God whom we preach is the Lord of heaven and earth and that there is no God besides him?' Ans. 'I do.'
"'Dost thou desire to leave the ways of darkness and walk in the light?' Ans. 'I do.'
"'Wilt thou patiently seek instruction in the ways of God?' Ans. 'I will.'
"Then followed a collect, after which the Bishop, taking him by the right hand, addressed him in these words:
"'The Lord vouchsafe to receive you into His holy household and to keep and govern you always in the same, that you may have everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.'
"The newly-admitted catechumen was then led into the church and seated among the congregation.
"Truth Teller is no longer the soldier, the warrior, or the chief counselor that he was, no longer honored or even respected. He is most pitiably degraded in the eyes of his people, most heartily despised by the Order of the Grass Dance. He has subjected himself to the merciless persecutions of that powerful Order, but as he has dropped a seed that cannot fail to bring forth good fruit, it now remains for the Government to specially care for, protect, and encourage the man in his laudable efforts to break up that evil genius inimical to civilization--the Grass Dance Lodge." . . .
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Post by mdenney on Jan 27, 2007 20:10:50 GMT -5
A thrilling sequel to this act of Truth Teller has been recently related, as follows:
"Truth Teller's act angered the young Indians of his camp. Armed and with painted faces they rushed into the Bishop's presence, crying, 'We want that drum!' One of them, coming close to the Bishop, said to him in a low voice, 'I am your friend,' then, loudly, 'We want that drum!' Calmly facing them, the Bishop said, 'My friends, Truth Teller gave that drum to me. He said it was his and he had a right to dispose of it as he wished. I cannot give away what my friend has given to me.' But they insisted that the drum belonged to the company, not to the one man. 'The Agent shall decide this question,' the Bishop finally told them. 'If he says the drum is yours, of course you shall have it.' Under the circumstances the Agent found the wisest verdict was to award the drum to the young men."
In Anpao for August, 1879, is found a letter on "The Cheyenne River Agency Mission," well worth preserving for its estimate of Indian character as seen under the conditions best suited to its display:
"Accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Swift, I lately paid a visit, full of interest, to some Minnecon-jous, Sans Arcs, Blackfeet and other bands of Sioux who are connected with the Cheyenne River Agency. We found the chief, Four Bears, and the other Indians, who had heard that we were coming, on tip-toe with expectation. Their signal fires were visible by night long before we reached their camp, and when we arrived we found them more than ready to escort us over their country, display its merits and make it clear how much there was to give promise of success, if we would only plant among them the Industrial Mission which they so much desired.
"It is when you bury yourself with him in his own wild country that the Indian appears at his best. He is faithful and versatile in emergencies, considerate and tractable in his intercourse with you, and, about the camp-fire, easy, communicative and confiding. We scoured the country up hill and down dale all day long, and decided, to the joy of our Indian friends, that it abounded in the three sine qua non to a successful settlement, viz., timber, good water and arable land. At night we returned to the camp, where I promised myself the comfort of sleeping in a new tent which the chief's wife had but lately set up. I found, however, that in our absence the good woman had swept and garnished her log cabin for us and that I should give mortal offense unless I accepted the attention. And so, after two or three hours of talk with a houseful of Indians, amidst clouds of smoke from tobacco pipes, and of fumes, not so pleasant though quite as odoriferous, from heated bodies, Mr. Swift and I lay down upon a couch which our hostess had prepared for us, which, whatever its shortcomings, gratitude and sentiment metamorphosed into a cleanly and inviting bed, while Four Bears, the chief, and his wife committed themselves to sleep upon an even less comfortable couch, and their son, a young man of eighteen, stretched himself on the earth floor between us. This young man has taught himself to read and write his own tongue and showed with modest pride his Bible and Prayer Book and read in the former for me.
"The next day, Friday, we traveled some forty-five miles in a wagon without springs over a rough road and were almost jolted to pieces; but about five o'clock we reached St. Paul's Mission Station at Mackenzie's Point and found, in the joy of the people who crowded the chapel on our arrival and in the many signs of progress which met our eyes, ample reward for the fatigue of the day. Mr. and Mrs. Swift resided in this camp for a year and the condition of the people tells of the useful lessons for guidance in daily life which they then learned, which their faithful Indian Catechist, whose good wife keeps the Mission House as clean as any white woman could, successfully labors to keep fresh in their minds.
"I confirmed here on Saturday morning a class of ten.
"At noon we started in an open wagon for the central mission, the residence of the missionary, distant twenty-two miles. We had been on our way but an hour when a tremendous storm of wind, rain and hail came down upon us. Shelter there was none within many miles and we pressed on toward the crossing of the Cheyenne River. Here we found a rude skiff half full of water and we all fell to work to turn it over and empty it, animated by the hurried exclamations of our Indian guides, who feared that the river, already considerably swollen, would become impassable before we could cross it. Indians shine in such emergencies, if disposed to please you. They will plunge, on horseback, into streams running like a mill-race, or doff their clothes as readily as a white man would his hat, and swim the flood, carrying your valuables upon their heads. We hurried on and were congratulating ourselves that the storm was over and there was now no barrier between us and our destination, when, on reaching the brow of a hill, we discovered to our dismay that the rivulet which ran in the valley beneath us was swollen to a river, surging along at the rate of from eight to ten miles an hour. There was nothing to do but to sit down and wait for the stream to run by. We watched the flood disconsolately till sunset, then till dark, and at length reluctantly made up our minds that we should have to spend the night there. We were all hungry as well as wet. A messenger managed to swim the stream and made his way to the mission, six miles off, where, as we afterwards learned, he represented that we were starving. By nine o'clock our ears were greeted by the sound of his horse's feet and, presently, his precious burden of food was borne across the stream on his head and laid in safety at our feet. It was eagerly devoured and we were then fain to roll ourselves up in our blankets upon Mother Earth and invite the descent of 'tired nature's sweet restorer,' which in our case proved rather dewy than 'balmy sleep.'
"With the early dawn we rose, found, to our relief, that our stream had been more considerate than that which the poet wrote of, and had indeed run by. It was not long before we reached St. John's Mission and Boarding School, the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Swift. I thought myself at first too worn out and stiff for any duty, but the sight of the fourteen neat, happy-looking Indian girls who constitute the school, the evidences which I saw of their docility and of their dexterity at the wash-tub and the kneading-trough, the sweetness of their responsive singing at family prayers and then the gathering of the Christian Indians and their cordial handshaking and hearty 'Hows' were inspiriting, and I found by ten o'clock at night that, notwithstanding my fatigue, I had participated with Mr. Swift in three services, two for Indians and one at Fort Bennett for white people, and confirmed a class of thirteen. At another station, twenty miles off, I confirmed, a few days later, a class of eight.
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Post by mdenney on Jan 27, 2007 20:11:33 GMT -5
"It does not do to scrutinize human nature too closely, whether out here or in New York, unless at the same time that you scrutinize that of other people, you examine your own, and there is much that could be said of these Indians (and many like nothing better than to say it) which it would not be encouraging to detail; but they are the victims of so many disadvantages, their desire to extricate themselves from their sad plight seems in many cases so honest, and so great a change for the better has taken place among them within the last few years, that their case appeals to my deepest feelings and it is not easy for me to realize that they can be the defiant and supercilious people whom I first met six years ago. Mr. Swift's seven years of labors and exhortations in season and out of season are bearing fruit and the eminently wise administration of the present Agent, Captain Schwan of the Army, is bringing order out of chaos, so that they have become reasonably obedient and the best of them are clamorous almost to break away from the lazy village life in which they have hitherto huddled and to adopt the separate farm life which the Agent desires for them. . . .
"Opposition to a shameful proposition to despoil a tribe of Christian Indians of their farms has brought upon my head out here a storm of newspaper interpretations, and if I may believe some of the public prints, I am a pretty thoroughly demoralized fellow. There is no material offset to such calumnies which I should enjoy more than generous help in planting among these Cheyenne River Indians the church and mission dwelling which are so essential to their welfare and which they so much desire, and I conclude with the appeal of No Heart's, 'Let all our friends hear these words. We long for life. Help us more and more.'"
The transition from camp and travel to the life of the boarding-schools was one which Bishop Hare was constantly making, and the following letter, with its glimpse of him surrounded by Indian children, cannot be spared:
"HOPE SCHOOL, SPRINGFIELD, DAK., "May 17, 1881.
"To Our Benefactors Who Support Scholars in the Boarding Schools of Niobrara.
"MY DEAR FRIENDS: Some of you have heard, perhaps, of the five weeks which I spent first snow-bound and then flood-bound, vainly trying to get back to Niobrara, all the time just on the border of the Indian country, but never within it. It was annoying enough, but it seems so trifling as compared with the trials of those who were shut up in the Indian country all the winter through that I have not a word to say about it.
"Such a winter was never known: six full months of unintermitted rigor, communication was cut off five or six weeks at a time, and at some points, supplies were reduced so low that people were well off who managed to keep on hand the barest necessaries of life, such as coffee, pork and beans.
"The season leaped, however, at last from winter to summer in a week, and the members of the Mission are all recovering from the exhaustion from which they looked as if they had suffered, though they did not complain. The schools will soon rally from the evil effects of their special trials, which are chiefly apparent in the condition of some of the buildings and of the clothing of some of the children. In this latter the schools have been very short, as boxes expected in November and December have not yet come through.
"My time thus far since my return has been occupied chiefly with the schools. The improvement of the children has been most marked. I have heard them recite the multiplication table, answer questions in geography, and perform arithmetical exercises with a readiness which is not excelled in ordinary white schools.
"Their essays in speaking English have been very creditable, indeed. Imagine them pretty much the same as white children and you will have the truest conception of them. I went up to a little girl of ten years the other day, and putting my hand under her chin, enquired: 'And why didn't you sing at prayers this morning?' The answer, somewhat timidly and plaintively given, was: 'I did not want to.' 'And why didn't you want to?' was my reply. What did she respond, think you? ' 'Cause,' the answer of children all the world over, methinks.
"Yesterday, I proposed to the children of Hope School that I should give them a drive in my traveling wagon. They were more than ready, and in the afternoon we started, eleven little people crowded with me into a two-seated wagon, so that I was quite surrounded, 'Children to right of me, children to left of me, children in front of me,'--shall I complete the line and say, Volleyed and thundered'? No, not that; but I was charmed with the confiding way in which they soon came to be quite at home with me, first chatting with each other about the scenes through which we passed, and then at my request singing me some of their songs and hymns. Presently we stopped at a farmhouse where I had some business. The good people looked at my load a little askance, moved, I think, somewhat by the old dread that the whites have for the Indians and somewhat by the feeling: 'How absurd to try to do anything with a lot of Indian children!' I thought I would undeceive them, and therefore, after the children had played a few minutes in the grove back of the house, proposed to the family that the children should go into the sitting-room. 'Perhaps,' said I, 'you would like to hear them sing.' 'Why, yes,' was the quick but somewhat unbelieving reply. In we all went, and to the amazement of the audience, the children stood and sang, first:
"Jesus, meek and gentle,' . . .
and then one of their songs:
"'In a meadow green I saw a lamb,' . .
"I never before acted so much in the capacity of a traveling theatrical manager, and know now what are the sensations of such a personage when he is not ashamed of his troupe."
The humor of a situation was seldom lost on Bishop Hare, even when he looked beyond and behind some strange scene into its true significance. Thus, too, he put a just value upon the uses of a dignified symbolism in the roughest surroundings. Witness the ensuing letter:
"RED DOG'S CAMP, Oct. 27. [1882.]
"We reached Medicine Root Station, where Miss Leigh bravely represents the work of Christ, Wednesday, October 25. She was overjoyed to see us, for it is not once in a month that she sees a white person, and bustled around to make us comfortable in a way which made us feel that we were the most important persons in the world. We had a service in the evening, at which three young men and one young woman were baptized; were up bright and early the next morning and celebrated the Holy Communion before breakfast; after breakfast had another service at which I confirmed four and were off for the next station, fifteen miles distant, in time for a service there, and then for a drive of eight miles and a service at night at St. Andrew's Station, where Rev. Amos Ross, a native Deacon, is settled. The baptism of the three young men and one young woman at Medicine Root Station presented features of peculiar interest. The Indians are foolish and superstitious beyond description, and the work of the Church gives rise to surmises and notions of all possible sorts. A common feeling is one of dread. They watch the career of those who identify themselves with the Church, and, should sickness or death come upon them, lay the calamity at the door of the Church and argue that 'the new way' is good for white men, but was not meant for Indians. When any one advocates the Church and says it is 'a good thing,' they dare him to be himself baptized and see what the result will be! The three young men of whom I write came forward with a manner which indicated what an appalling step they were looked upon as taking and as if bracing themselves for the ordeal. They stood close together, shoulder to shoulder, one buttressing another, as it were, and swayed and bowed as they relieved their tense muscles by change of posture. One was in white man's dress, another in full Indian costume, the third had been able to procure only pants and vest and stood in his shirt sleeves; but one did not think of the ludicrousness of the apparel in the solemnity of the service. . . .
"At each of these stations the people gather together for worship in the Governmental Day Schools, which are transformed from schools into chapels by the movable prayer desks and altar and beautiful hangings which were provided for them by the members of the Niobrara League. I am sitting now in the schoolhouse in Red Dog's Camp facing this movable chancel furniture, and its effect is so salutary that I am moved to say (forgive my boldness) how much I wish that the same donors or other persons like-minded would send some hangings like them for a new station, called St. Luke's, among Spotted Tail's people, and for the chapel at which the girls of St. John's Boarding School worship, and for St. Paul's, Mackenzie's Point. Besides other good influence exerted by this adornment of the places we use for worship, it shows that we think worship of enough importance to be carefully prepared for. I thank God that, though we live in the wilds and are driven to all sorts of makeshifts in Niobrara, our public worship is never careless or slovenly."
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Post by mdenney on Jan 27, 2007 20:11:58 GMT -5
In November of 1884 Bishop Hare paid a visit to the Standing Rock Reservation, on the northern line of the present state of Dakota, and took the first steps towards the establishment of a mission there in the following year. His own account of the experience shows with what elemental conditions he had to deal even so late as 1884: "Early Monday we started out upon our trip up the river. Our party consisted of five selected Indians, the Rev. Mr. Swift and myself. Our destination was the Standing Rock Agency, where there is a large body of Indians as yet unreached by educational and missionary effort, some of whom have again and again sent us requests that we would come and do for them the work which we had done for other Indians. "Mr. Swift's Christian Indians have taken up their plea and pressed it upon us with great earnestness, No Heart, a Christian chief, and others volunteering to accompany us and smooth our way. A good deal of smoothing is sometimes necessary, for Indian life is a tangle of intrigue and diverse parties and clashing plans and interests through which the benevolent, however clever, may find it hard to make his way. "We reached the Agency in two days without mishap. Fort Yates is close by, and Mr. Swift and I were most hospitably entertained by the chaplain, one of our own clergy, the Rev. Mr. Dunbar. "We busied ourselves for two days, while our Indian colleagues moved among the Indians and quietly arranged for an interview. "The Government Boarding School work on this Reserve is in the hands of the Roman Catholics. That in charge of the Sisters is carried on with great self-denial, and we saw much that excited our warmest admiration. Of the evangelistic and pastoral work which has marked our Mission, we saw, however, little, and it is the lack of it which has led the people to invoke our aid. The agent, Major McLaughlin, is one of the best in the service, active, business-like, large-minded, and deeply interested in the Indians and in his work. "At the appointed time we met a large council of the Indians composed of men of all kinds, and all kinds of speeches were delivered; one chief saying that 'he blamed our grandfathers and his grandfathers. He blamed ours because they killed the Son of God, and he blamed his because they had not taught their children better ways'! Some intimated that they would be more favorably disposed to listen to us were the Indians who had listened to us better off! "Some said they were glad to see us if we had come to bring them more beef and sugar and coffee! After this fusillade of speeches made for effect, the representatives of the Indians who had again and again invoked our help rose and sententiously remarked that their minds were not changed, that they wanted our Mission, that they had said this several times before, and now said it again. "The mental and spiritual destitution of these poor people is appalling. Their call to us to come to their deliverance is distinct and emphatic. The work which the Church has done for their neighbors has provoked it. Somehow or other we must respond to it. "Mr. Swift and I, under the guidance of the agent (who in this and in every way showed us every courtesy), traversed the Reserve extensively that we might intelligently choose a location for our future enterprise, and at last fixed upon Oak Creek, where there are stretches of good arable land, with wood and water close at hand. "A mission begun here would soon gather about it a body of well-disposed Indians, and, by God's blessing, Mr. Swift's work among the Cheyenne River Indians would be reproduced. . . . "In starting on our return trip we got separated from some of our party, and at night took refuge in a camp of Indian herders and were forced to remain there nearly two days. A whole beef quartered and hung up just before the log house in which we slept, on a pole stretched between two trees, from which, when meal time drew near, large steaks were cut, assured us that, primitive as our quarters and our surroundings were, we should not lack food, while the free hospitality of the herders made us feel quite at home. About twenty miles from here the Congregationalists have established a Mission Station under a native teacher who is highly esteemed. We had hoped to visit it, but found he was absent and that a visit would add considerably to our journey. Surrendering this plan, therefore, from this point we struck out into the hack country, leaving roads and hoping that, as the weather was growing bitterly cold, we could make a short cut to White Wolf's Camp and cheer the little flock there. "Our friend No Heart disapproved the venture, but was over-persuaded and traveled with us till noon; but then announced laughingly that he could not afford to over-drive and kill his horses if we could afford to kill ours, and that he was sure we should be overtaken by the night and lose our way. He would camp near where he was. "Two others of our Indian companions were more hopeful. "The herder who had guided us and was about to return to the camp, thought we could reach our destination in four or five hours, and Mr. Swift and I, with two Indians, determined to cut loose from our baggage-wagon--our base of supplies--and make for White Wolf's Camp. "We followed a cattle trail hour after hour, each hour revealing no sign that we were nearer our destination than when we started. "The trail, too, divided into many smaller trails and, as they say, 'petered out.' Night came on. We pushed on and on until far in the night. Our perplexity was complete and, calling a 'council of war,' we determined that we were helplessly lost, and that our only recourse was to creep into the bushes near by and there pass the night. Our tent and most of our bedding and food, alas, were in the baggage-wagon. "We had taken the precaution, however, to bring some of our blankets and some food with us. I was better provided than the others. There was dry wood near by from which we made a huge fire. The night was intensely cold, freezing even the pickles in our lunch basket. Our quarters were not palatial, but they might have been worse. "The morning light revealed not a sign which was the least clew to any of us where we were. We traveled on, however, and after several hours, descried a figure on a hill-top some distance off. One of the Indians made for him. He turned out to be the native catechist from White Wolf's Camp, who was out seeking lost horses. He guided us to camp, where a sight met our gaze which was a full reward for all our night's discomfort--in a vast wilderness a new essay at a farming settlement, and at a central point a dozen Indians busy erecting a log chapel! I had sent them money with which to buy flooring, doors and window sash. They had themselves cut and hauled and hewn the logs, had put them in place and were doing all the work. The sight provoked the exclamation, 'In the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert.' The people's joy that I had come to see them, and my joy at seeing them, were alike unbounded." A recent letter from Major McLaughlin, now Indian Inspector, and author of the illuminating book, My Friend the Indian, brings a valuable corroboration of Bishop Hare's account of his visit to Standing Rock Agency, and of the first steps towards the establishment of St. Elizabeth's Mission there. The letter mentions one point which Bishop Hare's narrative does not touch upon, namely, that he made it very clear to the Indians with whom he conferred, "that he did not wish to erect his mission buildings in a district of the reservation within which a mission of any other denomination was then being conducted," and ends with a paragraph which must be quoted entire: "I met the Bishop very frequently during my fourteen years as Agent, at Standing Rock Agency, and esteemed him very highly. He was of sterling character, an earnest Christian gentleman, and broad-minded enough to recognize the good in every conscientious worker, regardless of what his religious affiliations might be." Through all the wanderings and vicissitudes to which the preceding pages have referred, the daily, the domestic concerns of those to whom he was most closely bound in the East, were constantly in his thoughts. The welfare of his son, the family birthdays, the health and affairs of all his circle, from parents to nephews and nieces, were frequently recurring topics in his intimate letters. These do not reveal him as one of those who rejoice in "roughing it" for its own sake. He is seen rather as taking his experiences as they came, and taking them without complaint, his tastes and instincts all the while pleading within him for the mode of life to which he was born, amongst the kinsfolk and friends whom he held--as they held him--in warm personal affection. Not long after his mother's death in 1883 he wrote to his sister Mary: "Mother's photograph, stuck into the frame of one of Mary's [his wife's], is before me as I write. How much those two women have done for me, and are still doing for me!" Corresponding with the element of tenderness in his feeling towards sister, mother and wife, was an element of chivalry towards all women. Corresponding also with the personal debt to the few women with whom he was most intimately allied, was the debt of all his mission work to the women of the Church. In the first of all his addresses to Indians, at Oneida, Wisconsin, he reported himself as saying, "I told the Indians of the meetings I had attended of ladies in Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and told them that I represented those ladies, and that they must see in my face the face of a thousand friends." These friends continued to multiply through such organizations as the Indians' Hope of Philadelphia, the Dakota League of Massachusetts, the Niobrara League of New York, a society devoted primarily to the work of Bishop Hare, and, finally, through many branches of the Woman's Auxiliary, to which the special organizations generally allied themselves. Owing much to the women of the East, he gave then of his best to the women of his Mission. Indeed, there was no portion of his service in which the inherent nature of the man expressed itself more fully. As the women of the Mission had to do especially with the children of the schools, it was often a joint benefit which he rendered to these two classes dependent upon his care. In the earliest days he is found taking an arduous journey, on the false rumor of an Indian uprising, to a distant post where two women were working unprotected. If there was danger, it was for him to share, and to guard those whom he had exposed to it. In the schools there was all manner of detail to be ordered properly, and, in the interest of women and children, he applied himself to it. When the Hope School at Springfield was about to begin its work, he wrote to his sister Mary, November 23, 1879: "I am still at Springfield wading through the preparatory stages of housekeeping, viz.: carpentering, painting, white-washing, house-cleaning; but nearer the finale, I am glad to say, than when I last wrote. I have been reading up on the subject of housekeeping in a little book, From Attic to Cellar, which I recommend to other young housekeepers, for instance Mother. It is surprising how much I know, and with what self-possession I give orders to a very bustling and self-confident cook I have the privilege of employing. She studies me and goes back to the kitchen wondering, I believe, whether such knowledge as to the condition in which dripping-pans, etc., should be kept is a sine qua non in the Episcopal office." In times of emergency his helpers were sure of his support. One of them, Miss Amelia Ives, has recalled in a private letter "the time of the burning of St. Mary's School and Mission buildings at Santee Agency [February, 1884]. He was at the East meeting his appointments there at the time of the fire, which occurred on Sunday morning. At 10 A. M., a message was sent, 'Mission buildings burned, all lives safe.' In a few hours the reply came, 'Start to-night, will be with you Wednesday night'; and he was. He canceled his engagements and took the first train that made connections through. When needed we knew that we could depend upon him absolutely." In a recent letter of a Congregationalist missionary, the Rev. Mary C. Collins, to a worker under Bishop Hare, Miss Mary S. Francis, a characteristic incident is related: "Once I was driving along the road on the bluff back of Pierre. It was near the holiday time and in the distance I saw a horse and small buggy with a man walking through the snowy slush, driving. In the buggy was a great trunk with the seat on top of it. It looked strange even in that queer country. As I approached I saw it was Bishop Hare. We met and greeted each other. Laughingly I said, 'Well, Bishop, it would be strange to see a lady with so large a trunk that she had to walk in order to transport it; but a man, and that man a Bishop, is beyond my comprehension.' He laughed heartily, and said, 'It is not all my personal belongings, but I found one of the belated Christmas boxes for the school, and I knew what the disappointment would be if they did not get it.' He had a very long distance to go, and was not a very young man then. The incident impressed itself upon my mind." Indeed, his own love of fun gave him a full understanding of the need of it--especially in the schools. "The Indian's old life," he once wrote, "was like his moccasin, soft and easy-fitting. The new life is like a tight, hard leather boot. It rubs him and makes him sore. Therefore the more innocent fun we can have in our Indian Boarding Schools the better." There were many incidents like that of the trunk, many practical applications of the truth, that "whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be the servant of all." The clergy under his charge recognized his constant care for them as clearly as the women of the Mission. And well they might, though none of them could have known of his writing to his sister in 1889, about a clergyman newly come to the mission field: "My heart sometimes bleeds for him and his wife. What is old to me must seem so new (and so repulsive), to a stranger." One of the older missionaries, the Rev. Edward Ashley, of Cheyenne Agency, has recently written: "To me he was not only Bishop, but father, brother, friend, and he was all of that to others also." Another of those who served longest under him, the Rev. H. Burt, of Crow Creek Agency, took for the subject of his address at the Indian Convocation of 1910 at Greenwood, "Bishop Hare, his constant thoughtfulness of us all." He recalled the words from the Bishop's first pastoral letter, "I shall have you constantly in my heart," and showed how truly this promise was fulfilled through nearly thirty-seven years. The qualities of thoughtfulness, tenderness, care and protection were those upon which Bishop Tuttle laid special emphasis in his memorial sermon on Bishop Hare in April of 1910. "The sweet care that settles itself for other men upon the loved ones in the home flowed forth from him upon all the different kinds of people represented in his scattered flock. A watchful shepherd's care outspreads itself over them all. So far as one man's strength could reach them, so far as one man's thoughts could plan for them, they were all thought about and cared for, for thirty-seven years." The work he set himself to do demanded quite as much of the head as of the heart. He was fortunate in possessing a rich gift of practical wisdom, and he used it to the best purpose. His working habits were always methodical. No surmountable obstacles could prevent him from keeping his appointments. In a land of wooden structures and high winds, no fire could destroy a mission building but that the insurance was found to be adequate, and paid up. His judgment of men was uncommonly keen. His marked diplomacy in dealing with them, in determining, for example, whether the settlers of a new town wanted a church for its own sake or for advertising purposes, and in choosing the course both of prudence and of spiritual leadership, was frequently called upon. It has been well said that one of the most remarkable points in his administration was "the fact that he was deceived so seldom and yet never started out with his guard up because of suspicion." If his kindness of heart had not at times involved him in disappointments at the hands of borrowers, he would have been hardly human--and a little disappointing besides. His shrewdness in selecting men to work under him is well illustrated by an incident related by the former rector of an important parish in New England--an incident of later years, but typical of a life-long astuteness. "I received a telephone message one morning. 'This is Bishop Hare. I am at Bishop------'s. Could you possibly come up to see me?' I had no idea that he was in the East, and said instantly, 'Of course,' and went. He explained to me that two men had been highly recommended to him for an important work in his district, and then said with a smile, 'Bishops recommended them. You know I never put any value upon the commendations of Bishops. You know these men. I want you to tell me whether my impression of them is right. I will now describe them.' His description of them was as keen as it was accurate." Valuable as all these qualities were in the cause of Indian civilization, it is clear that their scope was capable of wide extension. link below- anglicanhistory.org/usa/whhare/bio/06.html
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Post by mdenney on Jan 29, 2007 1:13:03 GMT -5
Removal of the Sioux and Winnebago Indians. "Most Minnesotans were so enraged over the Indian war that they were not satisfied even by the mass hanging of thirty-eight Sioux. They demanded that the Indians who had escaped to roam the prairies of Dakota Territory be pursued and punished and that all the captured Sioux be banished from the state -- the 1,700 or so peaceful Indians, mostly women and children, confined near Fort Snelling as well as the 800 or more men imprisoned at Mankato who had been convicted by the commission but not executed. "Incited by a resentful press, white Minnesotans were not disposed to distinguish between hostile and friendly Indians. A further indication of this unreasoning attitude was the concerted effort to remove the peaceful Winnebago Indians from their reservation in Blue Earth County to some place beyond the state's borders. The Winnebago had taken little or no part in the Sioux War and had already suffered several removals in the past. The fact that they lived on choice farm lands coveted by the whites raises a presumption that the settlers may well have been prompted by economic motives, coupled with fear and prejudice, in wanting to get rid of the unfortunate Winnebago. "Political leaders echoed (and at times fanned) demands for Indian removal. As early as September 9, 1862, Governor Ramsey had declared that The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the State. He also called for abrogating all Sioux treaties and using annuity money due the Indians to reimburse white victims of the Dakota War. Congress eventually accepted this suggestion, appropriating $200,000 in an act passed on February 16, 1863, and an additional $1,170,874 in 1864. A commission was set up to distribute Indian money for claims, many of which were criticized for being extravagant. Thousands of dollars, for example, were claimed for damage to rutabagas in the fields. One factor among many difficult to assess was the extent of damage done to abandoned farms by plundering white men and women for which the Indians received the blame. "But many people in the 1860s were more concerned about Indian relocation than about depredations. On December 16, 1862, Minnesota Senator Morton S. Wilkinson and Congressman William Windom introduced bills for the removal of both the Sioux and the Winnebago. The Winnebago act became law on February 21, 1863, and the Sioux act on March 3. Worded in general terms, the acts specified that the Indians were to be relocated on unoccupied land well adapted for agricultural purposes but beyond the limits of any state and that money derived from the sale of their old reservation lands should be invested for the tribes' benefit. "Congress appropriated only about $50,000 to transfer the Sioux and a like amount for the Winnebago. Acting for the president, Dole, commissioner of Indian affairs, and John P. Usher, new secretary of the interior, decided to locate both tribes on the Missouri River within a hundred miles of Fort Randall in Dakota Territory. This site could be supplied by river and would permit the Fort Randall garrison to guard and contain the Indians. Specific arrangements were left to Clark W. Thompson, superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern district, which included Minnesota. Like Agent Galbraith before him, Thompson was a Republican political appointee." The Sioux Uprising of 1862, p. 76 Concentrating the Chippewa Reservations. "The gathering of scattered bands of Indians into a tribal group and the placing of them on a single reservation was a policy adopted in early times and followed with some consistency in the West. As the reader knows, the Dakota were segregated on their ill-shaped reservations along the upper Minnesota River under the operation of the treaties of 1851, and in 1855 the scattered bands of Winnebago were finally located on their Blue Earth Reservation. The Indian office and friends of the Indians believed that the concentration of the Chippewa bands residing on the eight reservations assigned to them in 1855 would be desirable. A concentration treaty was negotiated at Washington on March 11, 1863, in which the Mississippi bands agreed to abandon their five scattered reservations in exchange for a single greater reservation surrounding the three reservations occupied by the Pillagers and allied bands at Cass, Leech, and Winnibigoshish lakes. The Chippewa were represented at the negotiation by Henry M. Rice, who had finished his term in the United States Senate on March 3." A History of Minnesota, Vol. IV, pp. 192-93 The Sioux Prisoners at Mankato. "When navigation opened on the Mississippi River in the spring of 1863, the first Dakota people to be transported from Minnesota were the prisoners at Mankato. During the winter the prison was one great school, said missionary Riggs, because he and the convicts who had attended mission schools helped the other prisoners learn to read and write in their own language. The prison also was an active church; Dr. Williamson and others conducted frequent services and prayer meetings. Lacking access to their medicine men, the Sioux became praying and hymn-singing Christians. Missionaries Williamson and Gideon H. Pond baptized more than 300 prisoners, 274 of them on one day, February 8, 1863 "Fearful of possible mob violence, Commissioner Dole tried to keep secret the arrangements for the prisoners' transfer from Mankato to military barracks at Camp McClellan near Davenport, Iowa. Although Mankatoans knew by mid-April that the prisoners would be leaving soon, they were not aware of the exact departure date until April 21, when the steamboat Favorite docked on its return from an upriver trip to Fort Ridgely. The next morning, soldiers of the Seventh Minnesota Regiment kept the crowd away by forming two lines through which the Sioux could pass unmolested from the log prison to the boat. Fifteen to twenty women who had been cooks and housekeepers for the prisoners boarded first, followed by forty-eight men who had been acquitted of formal charges, and then by the convicts chained in pairs. A military escort of eighty-five men from the Seventh regiment's Company C accompanied them. The Indians sang hymns and conducted devotional services as the Favorite made its way down the Minnesota River to Fort Snelling, where most of the women and all of the forty-eight acquitted men were hurriedly put ashore to join the uncomfortable camp of the 1,700 Sioux who had been there all winter. The boat took the others down the Mississippi to a prison at Davenport without further incident." The Sioux Uprising of 1862, pp. 77-78 more reading on links www.renne.com/Paternal/PedSfam1.htmlwww.renne.com/Paternal/PedSfam2.htmlThis came from here in my search of the files link below www.renne.com/Paternal/?M=A
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Post by mdenney on Jan 30, 2007 14:49:44 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Jan 30, 2007 15:31:16 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Jan 31, 2007 21:05:23 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Jan 31, 2007 21:36:05 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Jan 31, 2007 21:37:51 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Jan 31, 2007 21:40:01 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Feb 2, 2007 2:26:32 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Feb 2, 2007 2:40:10 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Feb 2, 2007 2:54:52 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Feb 2, 2007 2:55:27 GMT -5
DAKOTA CONFLICT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timeline of Important Events Memorials & Monuments & Museums link below- www.rrcnet.org/~historic/
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