Samuel Baskin (born 1870) was from Santee, Nebraska, and entered Hampton in 1890 at the age of twenty. After graduating in 1895, he attended Kimball Academy at Meriden, New Hampshire. He later worked as a mechanic at the Santee Normal Training School in Nebraska. (Littlefield and Parins, Biobibliography: Supplement, 171; Southern Workman, April 1918, 208)
(Delivered on Indian Day)
We all know that what has brought us to be what we are and where we are, is the spirit of American civilization, and it is constantly blotting out our Indian manner of living and in place of it, has given us American rights, homes, citizenship. So we come together this afternoon to show our appreciation to our friends and to our God. But we must also look back to our old time Indians and thank them too for what little they have given toward building up this great nation of ours.
Let us go back to our first acquaintance with the white people and see what lessons they have learned from our fathers. The red man, as you all know, was found in this country a wild man but there is one thing about him, he was very active in his own country. I mean he knew the waters, the hills, the woods, and the forces of nature, such as the rain, and the snow, the sun, and the stars of the heaven and he respected them for they were his schoolmasters.
He made his canoe from a log, or birch bark, in which he navigated the waters. He made his snowshoes on which he could travel and hunt in time of winter and not be shut in to starve. He made his sugar from the maple by boiling the sap. He cleared the woods not with such tools as we have today but by burning down the trees, for his tools were made of chipped or finely polished stones; yet with these he was able to plant his corn, tomatoes, squashes, beans, and tobacco. I suppose tobacco is something I ought not to count, but in the time of Capt. John Smith, it was one of the chief products of cultivation and since then has been a profitable trade to the world.
The Indian’s method of planting, hunting, cooking, and fishing was imitated by the early settlers and so saved them from starvation and enabled them to gain a foothold in this country. These are some of the lessons the white made learned when he first came to this country. We might say we were the first instructors of this country and afterwards we received the white man’s method of living. The knowledge of nature and knowledge of books, these two elements have combined and have made America what it is today.16