Carlos Montezuma, or Wassaja (Signaling, ca. 1866–1923), was born in Arizona. As a young child, he was captured by the Pimas and sold to a photographer. He attended public schools in Chicago and New York and earned a degree in medicine from the Chicago Medical College in 1889. He worked as agency physician in the Indian Service; from 1894 to 1896 he served as resident physician at Carlisle. He later returned to Chicago, where he worked as a private physician. For a brief period he was engaged to Gertrude Bonnin.
Montezuma was one of six founding members of the Society of American Indians (SAI) and published numerous essays in its magazine. He founded his own monthly newsletter, Wassaja: Freedom’s Signal for the Indians, in April 1916 after growing dissatisfied with the accommodationist stance of the SAI’s magazine under the editorship of Arthur C. Parker. Montezuma used Wassaja as a medium for launching his critique of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As Montezuma explains in the first issue, Wassaja’s “sole purpose is Freedom for the Indians throughout the abolishment of the Indian Bureau.” (Littlefield and Parins, Biobibliography: Supplement 255; Peyer, American Indian Nonfiction, 341–42; Wassaja, April 1916, 1)
I have been thinking what would be best to write that might be a help and encouragement to you in your studies this year.1 I have concluded to relate to you briefly my early schooling and graduation to the degree of Bachelor of Science.
Now, imagine a small Apache boy in the wilds of Arizona, just as happy as a bird, free from every thought of danger.
How little did I think one night would separate me from my mother, father, sisters, and brother to live among strangers and be no more free! How little did I realize that this horrid prison life was but the stepping-stone to a better and nobler aim! A brighter morning dawned at last! So with you all.
In the year 1871 I was taken from the most warlike tribe in America and placed in the midst of civilization in Chicago. My greatest wish was to understand the paper talking, as it was interpreted to me. I often saw boys and girls go to and from the schoolhouse. I had no idea that they all had to be taught, but I had a little suspicious idea of the house. One morning, in April, the boy with whom I had associated persuaded me to come into the schoolyard to play marbles by saying that “I could win piles of marbles if I did!” So I consented.
The bell rang for the school to begin. I went in and took a seat. The teacher came forward and asked me if I wanted to attend school. I could not speak English; all I could say was “yes.”
Of course, I naturally said yes to every question. I was taken up to the principal. Here I was questioned and given a small note. This note specified what books I was to get. I left the school feeling as big as ever, and took the note to my guardian. He gave me a few pieces of money to purchase what was necessary. This was the beginning of my education.
At this time I knew not my A, B, C’s. I could not count nor understand letters. It was but a few months before I could repeat the Lord’s prayer, sing “Precious Jewels” with the scholars, say my A, B, C’s, and count to one hundred, besides write and describe different objects.
I learned as fast as any of the whites, for the reason that the teacher delighted to instruct me.
I left this school and went to another one. Here was the best teacher I ever had in a public school. This lady seemed to comprehend the nature of my circumstances and aided me all she could. I made good advancement in my first reader by taking my books home at night, so that I could be instructed there also.
Most of the reading I committed to memory.
On account of ill health I left this city and went into the country where for two years I walked two and a half miles to school, and worked to earn my board. This was when I was only nine years of age.
In the spring of 1877, I went to Brooklyn to school. I was by this time sufficiently advanced to study grammar, arithmetic, and history. At this school I always stood at the head of my class. I did this by staying at home nights to study; not by standing at corners as did some of the white children.
In the fall of 1877, I returned to Urbana, Ill., where I was assisted in my studies with the view of preparing me for the State University. Inside of one year I passed an examination in geometry, algebra, philosophy, bookkeeping, botany, composition, and physiology.
I made my way in College by paying and by working for my board.
In summer I worked on a farm. This I continued for four years, when I graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science in the School of Chemistry.
During these years I never have doubted that the great problem of the Indian question is capable of solution if the advantages which were open to me could be extended to all Indian youth.
So with you all. Take care! You are being watched, and time will prove whether you are worthy of being protected and educated.2
The reports of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, Indian Agents, school officials, and the missionaries usually create the impression that the Indians are all improving.
An anxious friend of a patient inquired of the doctor as he passed from his morning call:
“How is the patient?”
“Improving,” was the reply.
Next day she asked again:
“How is the patient this morning, Doctor?”
“Improving,” he said.
And several times again she inquired with the same answer.
Some days after her last inquiry, she heard of the patient’s death. One of her friends asked her:
“What did the patient die with?”
She replied:
“I guess she died with ‘improvement.’”
It is high time that a red flag or some other danger signal be hung up on the present Indian policy or the Indians will all die with “improvement.”
The Indians of today are not the Indians of the past. They have been cut loose from the advantages of barbarism and thus far have not profited by civilization. This makes the Indians of the present more degraded than their forefathers ever were.
I go back to my childhood and behold coming forth from his wigwam, the stoic warrior of mountain, plain, and forest. He was the child of nature and a true American. Erect in form and strong in presence, his head was carried high, was mantled with long black hair, and decorated with the feathers of the bird that soars above the storm. These were the tokens of strength, prosperity, and happiness. The brow told of purpose, of conscience, or independence, or liberty; the penetrating eye measured the depth of human nature and spoke louder than words. The massive jaw and the clear-cut, firm lips told of natural strength and character; the beads that ornamented his proud neck, placed there by the hand of a woman, were tokens of her pure devotion and love for him when far away.
This man took in the pure breath of heaven and defied the germ of disease. A strong and steady arm drew the bowstring and brought in the wild game for food and clothing. The girded loin sustained hunger, thirst, and fatigue from early dawn into darkness of midnight. Strong and elastic limbs and fleet moccasined feet, which distance never tired, overmatched the panting deer.
But the times have changed, and the Indian has changed with them. The picture fades away; the warrior sings the last chant, droops the high bow, abandons personal hope, and gazes with yearning heart into the face of his children.
What about the Indian boy and girl? The little warrior and his sister?
If brought out under the broad daylight of your civilization they might in a higher way outstrip their grandfather and escape the deadly fate of their father.
Do you know that your whole effort has been and now is crowding them into depths of a state worse than barbarism?
If you go on and hold down the latent power of the young Indian in the poisonous tank of your present Indian system the new picture will present a form that once glowed with health, scarred by disease; the once open face and piercing eye will be filled with suspicion and fear; clear cut feature is no longer there; the hands that pulled the bow are weakened by misuse and poisoned by vice.
Nature’s child has fallen.
From generation to generation you have played upon our ignorance and superstition; you have blinded us. You have made us believe that you were helping us to your ways, but instead of that you are degrading us lower and lower by keeping us as outlawed Indians, and dumping upon us the evils, not the good of your ways.
We Indians are struggling in the dark to find a way out.
I have faced your civilized and uncivilized Indian in his own home, have investigated the Indian school system on and off the reservation, and above all have I passed from the Apache grass hut through the different stages of development among enlightened people.
Now I say more and more every year, I know that you are shortsighted in dealing with the Indian. Your mistakes have made him what he is today.
My convictions come from intense interest, from personal observation. I have put all my thought into it. Most people have a wrong idea of the reservation; it is not an earthly paradise, nor a land of milk and honey, where the pipe of peace is continually smoked. It is a demoralized prison; a barrier against enlightenment, a promoter of idleness, beggary, gambling, pauperism, ruin, and death. It is a battlefield on which ignorance and superstition are massed against a thin skirmish line sent out from civilization.
What rational officer would place a few inferior soldiers against an overwhelming number of his foes?
What right has civilization to do just that in its effort or pretense to deal with the Indian question?
Do you hold a dog to freeze it to death and place yourself in the same atmosphere? You will freeze before the dog will.
Five or ten Government employees at an agency or on a reservation can never elevate its thousands of Indians; on the contrary, you send teachers to elevate the Indians and in a few years these teachers become Indians in habits and thought.
Would you isolate your children on a barren soil?
Would you surround them with ignorance and superstition?
Would you put them among idlers, beggars, paupers, and cowboys?
Would you put around them the bowie-knife, the revolver, and the bayonet?
Would you deliberately place them away from any civilization whatever?
If you did all this, would you expect them to be cultured, refined, intelligent, humane, and honest?
Would you expect to make them industrious and self-supporting citizens?
No, you would place them in the midst of the most refined, cultured, and educated communities, among English speaking people, where they could come face to face with all the phases of civilized life, so that they might utilize and improve all their faculties. You would do this not merely for five years, but for all of their lifetime, and even then if they turned out well you would have a sense of relief.
You are blinded and ignorant in the enjoyment of your civilized life.
In the midst of your refinement and education you are without a trace of an idea of the real facts about the Indian question. You need to have the real conditions forcibly brought to you before you can realize your duty.
What about the Indian on his fifty-two reservations?
“But ’tis in vain, the wretch is drenched too deep.
His soul is stupid and his heart asleep.
Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross.
He sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.
Down goes the wretch at once, unskilled to swim.
Helpless to bubble up and reach the water’s brim.”
Shame! upon a Nation to have these fifty-two dark spots in the map, after God has given us four hundred years to wipe them out!
Yes, the Indians are more degraded than they were when Columbus discovered America.
Do you know why?
It is because you have constantly thrown us back upon ourselves, hiding us in the darkness of our ignorance and superstition, because you have sent in more vice than virtue, and you have taken out more virtue than vice.
You have given the Indians schools on the reservations, and your churches endeavor to Christianize them in their wigwams; the Government tenderly feeds and clothes them; but, in their ignorant, stupid condition; cut off from the light of the world, they will remain Indians for ages to come or disappear through the ravages of idleness and vice. A higher race contributes to these sad conditions.
Some one has said: “Civilized nations have often become savage when left to themselves; savages left to themselves have never become civilized.”
Goldsmith says: “People seldom improve when they have no other models but themselves to copy after.”
It is not enough to make visits like swallows to civilization; that will never do.
Long range education away from civilization is an utter failure.
Five years of schooling is not education for the Indian boy any more than for the white boy. It is a mere white-wash education. The boy and girl go home and back to barbarism.
To accomplish the elevation of the Indian, compulsory education will be necessary. This education should not be on reservations nor near them, but in your public schools. If the choice of my life had been left to my mother and father or myself, I would not be here. Ignorance and the very depths of barbarism would have been my fate.
You are sympathetic and philanthropic; but your sympathy and philanthropy when exerted to the secluding of the Indians on the reservations are misplaced. It is unjust, it is inhuman; it is criminal to stun the Indian from his birth to his death.
Would you give a child a few hundred dollars a year to do with as it pleases?
The Indians in their present state have become children. The intention of the people and the Government towards the Indian is good, but you cannot cancel your obligation by giving him large money annuities. You feed able-bodied men and women; you take away the need of personal effort; you hold them in idleness; you encourage barbarism. Against these methods and this treatment, I protest.
You may care for the weak and helpless but do not make strong men idle.
Good people wish the Indians were like themselves but think it cruel to change their relations and habits at once.
There is a story that goes this way:
There was a saint who had a dog; the dog had too long a tail. He concluded to cut the poor unfortunate’s tail off little by little so as not to hurt the dear dog too much.
In much this way we are treating the Indians. Let us stop this destructive policy. Let us cut the Gordian knot by the quickest way possible. Delay is ruin to my race.
Does anyone say that this race is not endowed by nature with some great qualities which the Caucasian would do well to preserve? Yes, more to imitate?
Do I hear any one say that the Indian has no fine qualities worth preserving? Do I hear this from anyone? If I do, my words are not for him.
Why do you not wipe out these dark reservations? Let the Indian earn his living in God’s appointed way, “by the sweat of his brow.”
This is the only way to liberty, manhood, and citizenship.
Some of these Indians when brought into competition with white men will die, you say.
True, but that is what they are doing now.
But you say: They are wards of the nation and we must deal honorably and justly with them.
What you say is true, and you mean well, but to hear you speak of dealing honestly and justly with the Indian makes an Indian smile.
You ask what shall be done with the reservations which the nation holds in trust for the Indian?
I answer, sell them to bonafide settlers.
What shall be done with the money?
Use it and more if necessary for the education of every Indian child or youth.
Where and how would you educate them?
Away with the reservation schools! Send all children to the most civilized communities, not in large masses, but scatter them in small classes over the United States and place them in the public schools. Let them be brought up in and become citizens of the various states.
But this would be cruel to take little children from their parents and natural protectors.
True, I know about that because it happened to me.
But you ask: What right have we to take away a child from its Indian parents?
I answer: It is done every day by the courts in the cases of white children whose parents are incapable of taking care of them. You can never civilize the Indian until you place him while yet young (and the younger the better) in direct relations with good civilization. When you do this with judgment, you will succeed and make him a useful citizen of the Republic.
You have compromised and compromised with the Indians, fed and clothed them as children and have kept them pent up away from civilization. You know the results.
By leaving the education of the papooses to their ignorant and superstitious parents, you have encouraged the blind to lead the blind. The system is worse than a failure. And worst of all you have done this carelessly and not without good motives.
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
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?
“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.
“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.
“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?
“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.
“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.
“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
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
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 missionaries 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.
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
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