John Milton Oskison (1874–1947) was born in Vinita, Cherokee Nation. He attended Willie Halsell College along with his friend Will Rogers. After graduating in 1894 he studied at Stanford University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1898. At Stanford he began publishing articles and short stories. After winning a writing contest sponsored by Century Magazine in 1899 while doing graduate work at Harvard, he decided to become a professional writer. He published numerous short stories in popular American magazines such as Century, McClure’s, and Collier’s. From 1903 to 1906 he was an editorial writer on the New York Evening Post, and from 1907 to 1910 he was an associate editor for Collier’s. He was a founding member of the Society of American Indians, and in 1917 he served as vice-president. His essays on Indian affairs were published in boarding school newspapers and the SAI’s magazine, where he was a contributing editor. (Larré, John Milton Oskison, 1–4; Littlefield and Parins, Biobibliography: Supplement, 261; Peyer, American Indian Nonfiction, 382) 1
The first and most important step towards the absorption of the Indian is to teach him to earn his living.
—President Roosevelt, in his last message to Congress
Fortunately for the white race that has extended our frontiers, the “bad” Indian has long ago ceased to exist; fortunately for the Indian who must still face the problem of living, the time has passed when the lawless, cynical white man can appropriate his reservations with impunity and have him “suppressed” when he begins to ask for justice. We are far enough away from the crunching of cavalry hoofs and the rallying yell of warriors to see that there are two sides to the question. Only the most rabid and ignorant enemies of the Indian still maintain that unfortunate, cynical doctrine that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” And only the most obstinate of our Indians still rail against the domination of the white race.
It is a hopeful fact that the leaders among the various societies formed to protect and befriend the Indian have substituted personal knowledge and close observation for an enthusiastic but ignorant sympathy. They have come to understand that an Indian is a human being with a long and significant history behind him, with a very well-worked-out moral law, and with a tradition of living that is not easy to give up. Likewise, the Indian has come to understand that the white man has a tradition of living to maintain, and that it is not altogether greed and hatred that have sent him forward across frontiers. Tolerance increases.
Now that the races have come to know each other better and have laid aside the old distrust and fear, we hear those who are qualified to speak with authority say that the next inevitable step is the complete absorption of the Indian into the white race, which will result in an ultimate amalgamation of the two. This is an idea that is worth considering. The sooner all the foolish talk about the impossibility of uniting the two people ceases, the better.
Commissioner Jones, in a recent report, calls attention to the fact that the nation has expended over a billion dollars in subduing and attempting to educate the Indians, only to learn of the absolute failure of the “ration system” as a device for making useful or productive citizens of them. That the policy of feeding the Indian at public expense on reservations was the outgrowth of a mistaken philanthropy and was foolish in that it exempted the Indian from the natural and inexorable law that man must earn his living by labor of some kind is now universally recognized. How to rectify the errors growing out of this policy and supplant it by a system that would ultimately induce the Indian to put his hand to the plow is a problem that has engaged the study and activity of Commissioner Jones since his induction into office.
The most radical change inaugurated was the departure from the custom of dealing with the tribe to that of dealing with the individual. The results attending this change, according to Commissioner Jones, have been most gratifying. The manhood of the Indian is appealed to, and he is taught self-reliance and self-respect. As a result of this policy, over 12,000 have been dropped from the ration roll, being wholly self-supporting, and others not yet self-supporting have been put to work. The Indians will become self-supporting, and will adapt themselves to their white neighbors’ way of life—there is no doubt of it. But they are not yet ready for the struggle on equal terms; they must be protected from speculators and land-grabbers; they must be led to see what economic independence really means; and their education must be adapted to the needs of their future life. Think of them how we will, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that they are still children, with all of the child’s ignorance of modern life, with the child’s helplessness in practical affairs. For a little longer the “Great Father” at Washington must direct them.
How constant must be the “Great Father’s” vigilance is shown almost every day. It is interesting to compare a part of Mr. Hamlin Garland’s last novel, The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, with the story of the Standing Rock cattle leases. In the course of the contest over the Standing Rock land leases, now more than a year ago, it became necessary for the Indians to send a delegation of Sioux chiefs to Washington, where, after waiting two weeks, they met the Senate committee on Indian Affairs. They convinced the senators that the cattlemen’s contract, if carried out, would amount to robbery, and would delay the time when the tribe could take up the work of grazing and farming on their own account. The publicity given the matter by the visit of the chiefs led to its being referred directly to President Roosevelt who sent Dr. George Bird Grinnell to Standing Rock. The matter gained wide publicity and it is not improbable that the disclosures made by the Grinnell report will result in the appointment of another agent at Standing Rock. Here is Mr. Garland’s tale worked out in actual life almost before the book was off the press. And, as in the novel, there is a distinctly hopeful ending to the story. Everywhere it is true that eternal vigilance is still necessary to ensure the Indians a chance even to earn a living. Moreover they must be taught how to work. It is not yet enough to say, “Here are lands well protected and productive: take them and develop their resources.” The Indians do not know how to do it, and they must learn.
The founders of the new Sherman Institute at Riverside, California, have set an excellent example.2 Here a farm of one hundred acres has been purchased, all under irrigation; ample buildings have been erected to accommodate over three hundred children from the Pacific Coast tribes and those in the Southwest where irrigation must be resorted to in order to raise crops. The idea is to train them in this peculiar method so that the graduates may return to their people equipped for the task of turning deserts into rich fields with the aid of precious water. For the girls there is to be instruction in lace making, dressmaking, fine needlework, basketry, plain sewing, and housework—with all that ranch housekeeping implies. And the peculiar value of an institution like this is that its members can go out of the school to the reservation and take up the work of making a living without readjusting themselves to different methods of work from those prevailing at the training school in a far-away state. If a man is to grow alfalfa to make his land yield a living he is not likely to appreciate half a dozen years of instruction in the planting and cultivation of corn and cotton. For this reason the neighborhood school for industrial training is of the greatest value.
In the Indian Territory, where, for more than twenty years, the tribes have come into competition with the whites as farmers, stock-raisers, teachers, lawyers, and tradesmen, the process of absorption is far advanced and education has also advanced rapidly. The Cherokees maintain three boarding schools and one colored high school. The enrollment in these four schools is something under five hundred and the expense of maintaining them amounts to about $140.00 a year per capita. For seven months in the twelve one hundred and twenty-four day, or neighborhood, schools, are run, with an average enrollment of 2,200, at a cost of about $14.00 per capita. It is estimated that there are some 8,300 children of school age in the tribe. In the Creek Nation nine boarding schools and fifty-five neighborhood schools are maintained, with an average attendance of over 1,500. The figures for the Choctaw Nation show six boarding, and one hundred and ten day schools, with an enrollment of more than 2,100. Five academies and seventeen primary schools with an approximate enrollment of 850 are supported by the Chickasaw Indians.
Mere figures, of course, have little meaning in themselves, but when it is known that all of these children are coming out of the schools to enter upon a course of life that brings them into contact with the whites—many of the girls to become the wives of white men—they assume importance. They mean that the Indian problem, so far as the tribes of the Territory are concerned, is being solved by extinguishing the Indian as a distinctive individual and merging him with his white neighbors and competitors. They mean that this process is going on more and more rapidly, and that when the Territory is brought into the ranks of the states, Indians and whites alike will be ready to take up the everyday work of a rich and prosperous commonwealth and do it successfully. And that, after all, is the problem in every tribe.3
The Spirit of the Lord had descended upon old Harjo.4 From the new missionary, just out from New York, he had learned that he was a sinner. The fire in the new missionary’s eyes and her gracious appeal had convinced old Harjo that this was the time to repent and be saved. He was very much in earnest, and he assured Miss Evans that he wanted to be baptized and received into the church at once. Miss Evans was enthusiastic and went to Mrs. Rowell with the news. It was Mrs. Rowell who had said that it was no use to try to convert the older Indians, and she, after fifteen years of work in Indian Territory missions, should have known. Miss Evans was pardonably proud of her conquest.
“Old Harjo converted!” exclaimed Mrs. Rowell. “Dear Miss Evans, do you know that old Harjo has two wives?” To the older woman it was as if someone had said to her, “Madame, the Sultan of Turkey wishes to teach one of your mission Sabbath school classes.”
“But,” protested the younger woman, “he is really sincere, and—.”
“Then ask him,” Mrs. Rowell interrupted a bit sternly, “if he will put away one of his wives. Ask him, before he comes into the presence of the Lord, if he is willing to conform to the laws of the country in which he lives, the country that guarantees his idle existence. Miss Evans, your work is not even begun.” No one who knew Mrs. Rowell would say that she lacked sincerity and patriotism. Her own cousin was an earnest crusader against Mormonism, and had gathered a goodly share of that wagonload of protests that the Senate had been asked to read when it was considering whether a certain statesman of Utah should be allowed to represent his state at Washington.5
In her practical, tactful way, Mrs. Rowell had kept clear of such embarrassments. At first, she had written letters of indignant protest to the Indian Office against the toleration of bigamy amongst the tribes. A wise inspector had been sent to the mission, and this man had pointed out that it was better to ignore certain things, “deplorable, to be sure,” than to attempt to make over the habits of the old men. Of course, the young Indians would not be permitted to take more than one wife each.
So Mrs. Rowell had discreetly limited her missionary efforts to the young, and had exercised toward the old and bigamous only that strict charity which even a hopeless sinner might claim.
Miss Evans, it was to be regretted, had only the vaguest notions about “expediency”; so weak on matters of doctrine was she that the news that Harjo was living with two wives didn’t startle her. She was young and possessed of but one enthusiasm—that for saving souls.
“I suppose,” she ventured, “that old Harjo must put away one wife before he can join the church?”
“There can be no question about it, Miss Evans.”
“Then I shall have to ask him to do it.” Miss Evans regretted the necessity for forcing this sacrifice, but had no doubt that the Indian would make it an order to accept the gift of salvation which she was commissioned to bear to him.
Harjo lived in a “double” log cabin three miles from the mission. His ten acres of corn had been gathered into its fence-rail crib; four hogs that were to furnish his winter’s bacon had been brought in from the woods and penned conveniently near to the crib; out in a corner of the garden, a fat mound of dirt rose where the crop of turnips and potatoes had been buried against the corrupting frost; and in the hayloft of his log stable were stored many pumpkins, dried corn, onions (suspended in bunches from the rafters) and the varied forage that Mrs. Harjo number one and Mrs. Harjo number two had thriftily provided. Three cows, three young heifers, two colts, and two patient, capable mares bore the Harjo brand, a fantastic “” that the old man had designed. Materially, Harjo was solvent; and if the Government had ever come to his aid he could not recall the date.
This attempt to rehabilitate old Harjo morally, Miss Evans felt, was not one to be made at the mission; it should be undertaken in the Creek’s own home where the evidences of his sin should confront him as she explained.
When Miss Evans rode up to the block in front of Harjo’s cabin, the old Indian came out, slowly and with a broadening smile of welcome on his face. A clean gray flannel shirt had taken the place of the white collarless garment, with crackling stiff bosom, that he had worn to the mission meetings. Comfortable, well-patched moccasins had been substituted for creaking boots, and brown corduroys, belted in at the waist, for tight black trousers. His abundant gray hair fell down on his shoulders. In his eyes, clear and large and black, glowed the light of true hospitality. Miss Evans thought of the patriarchs as she saw him lead her horse out to the stable; thus Abraham might have looked and lived.
“Harjo,” began Miss Evans before following the old man to the covered passageway between the disconnected cabins, “is it true that you have two wives?” Her tone was neither stern nor accusatory. The Creek had heard that question before, from scandalized missionaries and perplexed registry clerks when he went to Muscogee to enroll himself and his family in one of the many “final” records ordered to be made by the Government preparatory to dividing the Creek lands among the individual citizens.
For answer, Harjo called, first into the cabin that was used as a kitchen and then, in a loud, clear voice, toward the small field, where Miss Evans saw a flock of half-grown turkeys running about in the corn stubble. From the kitchen emerged a tall, thin Indian woman of fifty-five, with a red handkerchief bound severely over her head. She spoke to Miss Evans and sat down in the passageway. Presently, a clear, sweet voice was heard in the field; a stout, handsome woman, about the same age as the other, climbed the rail fence and came up to the house. She, also, greeted Miss Evans briefly. Then she carried a tin basin to the well near by, where she filled it to the brim. Setting it down on the horse block, she rolled back her sleeves, tucked in the collar of her gray blouse, and plunged her face in the water. In a minute she came out of the kitchen freshened and smiling. ’Liza Harjo had been pulling dried bean stalks at one end of the field, and it was dirty work. At last old Harjo turned to Miss Evans and said, “These two my wife—this one ’Liza, this one Jennie.”
It was done with simple dignity. Miss Evans bowed and stammered. Three pairs of eyes were turned upon her in patient, courteous inquiry.
It was hard to state the case. The old man was so evidently proud of his women, and so flattered by Miss Evans’ interest in them, that he would find it hard to understand. Still, it had to be done, and Miss Evans took the plunge.
“Harjo, you want to come into our church?” The old man’s face lighted.
“Oh, yes, I would come to Jesus, please, my friend.”
“Do you know, Harjo, that the Lord commanded that one man should mate with but one woman? The question was stated again in simpler terms, and the Indian replied, “Me know that now, my friend. Long time ago”—Harjo plainly meant the whole period previous to his conversion—“me did not know. The Lord Jesus did not speak to me in that time and so I was blind. I do what blind man do.”
“Harjo, you must have only one wife when you come into our church. Can’t you give up one of these women?” Miss Evans glanced at the two, sitting by with smiles of polite interest on their faces, understanding nothing. They had not shared Harjo’s enthusiasm either for the white man’s God or his language.
“Give up my wife?” A sly smile stole over his face. He leaned closer to Miss Evans. “You tell me, my friend, which one I give up.” He glanced from ’Liza to Jennie as if to weigh their attractions, and the two rewarded him with their pleasantest smiles. “You tell me which one,” he urged.
“Why, Harjo, how can I tell you!” Miss Evans had little sense of humor; she had taken the old man seriously.
“Then,” Harjo sighed, continuing the comedy, for surely the missionary was jesting with him, “’Liza and Jennie must say.” He talked to the Indian women for a time, and they laughed heartily. ’Liza, pointing to the other, shook her head. At length Harjo explained, “My friend, they cannot say. Jennie, she would run a race to see which one stay, but Liza, she say no, she is fat and cannot run.”
Miss Evans comprehended at last. She flushed angrily, and protested, “Harjo, you are making a mock of a sacred subject; I cannot allow you to talk like this.”
“But did you not speak in fun, my friend ?” Harjo queried, sobering. “Surely you have just said what your friend, the white woman at the mission (he meant Mrs. Rowell) would say, and you do not mean what you say.”
“Yes, Harjo, I mean it. It is true that Mrs. Rowell raised the point first, but I agree with her. The church cannot be defiled by receiving a bigamist into its membership.” Harjo saw that the young woman was serious, distressingly serious. He was silent for a long time, but at last he raised his head and spoke quietly, “It is not good to talk like that if it is not in fun.”
He rose and went to the stable. As he led Miss Evans’ horse up to the block it was champing a mouthful of corn, the last of a generous portion that Harjo had put before it. The Indian held the bridle and waited for Miss Evans to mount. She was embarrassed, humiliated, angry. It was absurd to be dismissed in this way by—“by an ignorant old bigamist!” Then the humor of it burst upon her, and its human aspect. In her anxiety concerning the spiritual welfare of the sinner Harjo, she had insulted the man Harjo. She began to understand why Mrs. Rowell had said that the old Indians were hopeless.
“Harjo,” she begged, coming out of the passageway, “please forgive me. I do not want you to give up one of your wives. Just tell me why you took them.”
“I will tell you that, my friend.” The old Creek looped the reins over his arm and sat down on the block. “For thirty years Jennie has lived with me as my wife. She is of the Bear people, and she came to me when I was thirty-five and she was twenty-five. She could not come before, for her mother was old, very old, and Jennie, she stay with her and feed her.
“So, when I was thirty years old I took ’Liza for my woman. She is of the Crow people. She help me make this little farm here when there was no farm for many miles around.
“Well, five years ’Liza and me, we live here and work hard. But there was no child. Then the old mother of Jennie she died, and Jennie got no family left in this part of the country. So ’Liza say to me, ‘Why don’t you take Jennie in here?’ I say, ‘You don’t care?’ and she say, ‘No, maybe we have children here then.’ But we have no children—never have children. We do not like that, but God He would not let it be. So, we have lived here thirty years very happy. Only just now you make me sad.”
“Harjo,” cried Miss Evans, “forget what I said. Forget that you wanted to join the church.” For a young mission worker with a single purpose always before her, Miss Evans was saying a strange thing. Yet she couldn’t help saying it; all of her zeal seemed to have been dissipated by a simple statement of the old man.
“I cannot forget to love Jesus, and I want to be saved,” Old Harjo spoke with solemn earnestness. The situation was distracting. On one side stood a convert eager for the protection of the church, asking only that he be allowed to fulfill the obligations of humanity and on the other stood the church, represented by Mrs. Rowell, that set an impossible condition on receiving old Harjo to itself. Miss Evans wanted to cry; prayer, she felt, would be entirely inadequate as a means of expression.
“Oh! Harjo,” she cried out, “I don’t know what to do. I must think it over and talk with Mrs. Rowell again.”
But Mrs. Rowell could suggest no way out; Miss Evans’ talk with her only gave the older woman another opportunity to preach the folly of wasting time on the old and “unreasonable” Indians. Certainly the church could not listen even to a hint of a compromise in this case. If Harjo wanted to be saved there was one way and only one—unless—
“Is either of the two women old? I mean, so old that she is—an—”
“Not at all,” answered Miss Evans. “They’re both strong and—yes, happy. I think they will outlive Harjo.”
“Can’t you appeal to one of the women to go away? I dare say we could provide for her.” Miss Evans, incongruously, remembered Jennie’s jesting proposal to race for the right to stay with Harjo. What could the mission provide as a substitute for the little home that ’Liza had helped to create there in the edge of the woods? What other home would satisfy Jennie?
“Mrs. Rowell, are you sure that we ought to try to take one of Harjo’s women from him? I’m not sure that it would in the least advance morality amongst the tribe, but I’m certain that it would make three gentle people unhappy for the rest of their lives.”
“You may be right, Miss Evans.” Mrs. Rowell was not seeking to create unhappiness, for enough of it inevitably came to be pictured in the little mission building. “You may be right,” she repeated, “but it is a grievous misfortune that old Harjo should wish to unite with the church.”
No one was more regular in his attendance at the mission meetings than old Harjo. Sitting well forward, he was always in plain view of Miss Evans at the organ. Before the service began, and after it was over, the old man greeted the young woman. There was never a spoken question, but in the Creek’s eyes was always a mute inquiry. Once Miss Evans ventured to write to her old pastor in New York, and explain her trouble. This was what he wrote in reply: “I am surprised that you are troubled, for I should have expected you to rejoice, as I do, over this new and wonderful evidence of the Lord’s reforming power. Though the church cannot receive the old man so long as he is confessedly a bigamist and violator of his country’s just laws, you should be greatly strengthened in your work through bringing him to desire salvation.”
“Oh! It’s easy to talk when you’re free from responsibility!” cried out Miss Evans. “But I woke him up to a desire for this water of salvation that he cannot take. I have seen Harjo’s home, and I know how cruel and useless it would be to urge him to give up what he loves—for he does love those two women who have spent half their lives and more with him. What, what can be done?”
Month after month, as old Harjo continued to occupy his seat in the mission meetings, with that mute appeal in his eyes and a persistent light of hope on his face, Miss Evans repeated the question, “What can be done?” If she was sometimes tempted to say to the old man, “Stop worrying about your soul; you’ll get to Heaven as surely as any of us,” there was always Mrs. Rowell to remind her that she was not a Mormon missionary. She could not run away from her perplexity. If she should secure a transfer to another station, she felt that Harjo would give up coming to the meetings, and in his despair become a positive influence for evil amongst his people. Mrs. Rowell would not waste her energy on an obstinate old man. No, Harjo was her creation, her impossible convert, and throughout the years, until death—the great solvent which is not always a solvent—came to one of them, would continue to haunt her.
And meanwhile, what?6
My business, or profession, is writing and editing. In my small way, I’ve tried to make myself an interpreter of the world, of the modern, progressive Indian. The greatest handicap I have is my enthusiasm. I know a lot of Indians who are making good; I know how sturdily they have set their faces toward the top of the hill, and how they’ve tramped on when the temptation to step aside and rest was strongest. When I try to write about them I lose my critical sense. Then the editors sympathize—“Too bad he’s got that Indian bug”—and ask me about the cowboys. Now, I’ll write fiction about cowboys, make ’em yip-yap and shoot their forty-fours till everybody’s deaf, but I will not repeat the old lies about the Indian for any editor that ever paid on acceptance!
“Most of the Indians that go through Carlisle really do go back to the blanket, don’t they?” It was an assertion rather than a question, and a modern magazine editor made it to me not a year ago.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I can send you accurate statistics compiled by Mr. Friedman, superintendent of the school, which show exactly what has become of the Carlisle graduates. They go back to useful, serviceable lives. They plow and trade, become soldiers and mechanics, enter the professions—teaching, nursing, the law, the diplomatic service, the ministry, medicine, politics, dentistry, veterinary surgery, writing, painting, acting. If you want me to do it, I’ll assemble a gallery of individual Indians who are getting to the top of their professions in a friendly, honorable competition with 90 million white Americans that will fill half of your magazine.”
Did he want me to do it? Not he! Better for him one Indian who had slumped than a hundred who had pushed ahead. If only Congressman Carter or Senator Curtis would go back to the tepee and the blanket!7 That would be a story worth telling!
Let us develop this profession of reformer; let us develop self-confidence—make ourselves effective, sane, and scientific. Cut out mere complaining, and develop the lawyer’s habit of investigation and clear arrangement of facts.
Last Spring, at Carlisle, I heard a Siceni Nori, a graduate of the school of 1894, talk to the graduating class of 1911. Mr. Nori is, I believe, a Pueblo Indian, and is a teacher at Carlisle. I should like to quote all of that good speech to you, changing it here and there to make it fit you. The gist of one paragraph I cannot resist using. It is one in which Mr. Nori ran over a list of Carlisle graduates who are making good in business and the professions:
“If it shall be the pleasure of any one here to take a trip to Cuba and it becomes necessary to have the assistance of a dentist, just look up Dr. James E. Johnson, who is enjoying an annual income of $4,000, and his wife, also a graduate, employed by the government at a salary of $1,200 per annum; or, if you desire to take the water trip, take the Pennsylvania Limited and go to Tiffin, Ohio, where you will find Dr. Caleb Sickles, another graduate and a prominent dentist who is equally successful; then, if you have time, go to Oneida, Wisconsin, where you will find Dr. Powlas, a prominent physician who has the largest practice at his home at DePere, Wis., and is a real leader and missionary among his people. Then proceed to Minnesota and find Carlisle graduates practicing law and other professions in the persons of Thomas Mani, Edward Rogers, and Dr. Oscar Davis. Or, if you took the southern way you would find along the Santa Fe route, Carlisle graduates and ex-students working in the various railroad shops and taking care of sections of that great railroad system, preferred above all other kinds of skilled labor, for they have shown their worth as good workmen. Or, you might meet Chas. A. Dagenett, a graduate, who is National Supervisor of Indian Employment, and who has by experience gained here at this school under the Outing System, been able by untiring effort, to systematize and build up what is really the Carlisle Outing System for the entire Indian Service, and for 300,000 Indians. It is not often possible to find a man who can be equally successful in everything that he attempts, but we have in a Carlisle graduate, Chas. A. Bender, the world-famous pitcher of the Philadelphia Athletics, a crack marksman and a jeweler by trade, and a past-master in all.”
Every month I get the Southern Workman, the school magazine published at Hampton. Over in the back is a department of “Indian notes,” which is inspiring reading. Here are printed bits of news of Indian graduates who are busy in the world. In one paragraph you will read that Elizabeth Bender is taking a nurse’s training at the Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia; in another that Eli Beardsley has gone to take a job as engineer at the Grand River School in South Dakota; in a third, that Jacob Morgan, a Navajo, is working as a missionary among his people in New Mexico.8 Month after month the list of those who graduate into the professions lengthens. And not only at Carlisle and Hampton are the professions recruiting Indian members, but Haskell and Sherman Institute, the high schools of Oklahoma and scattered colleges from Dartmouth to the University of Washington are turning them out. With me at Stanford University was an Indian named Jeffe, from Washington. Not only was he a good football player, but one of the best students we had in our law department. Another law student who came to Stanford in my time was a Cherokee named Hughes. He had previously spent two years in Dartmouth. Last fall at Muskogee, I had a good talk with a young Cherokee named Bushyhead, son of a former chief of my tribe.9 He had just come back from six months in Mexico where he went to learn Spanish. He was fitting himself for an appointment in the Diplomatic Service.
How many here know Little Bison, that thin-faced, keen-eyed Sioux who wants to colonize Nicaragua with American Indians? There’s the type of professional man who stirs the imagination! Professionally, Little Bison is a veterinary surgeon—very modestly, he told me once that there isn’t a better horse doctor in the country—but he has also been a showman, an artist’s model, a companion for an invalid man who wanted to see the ends of the earth before he died. Now he is a colonizer, a practical diplomat having business with the Estradas and the Zelayas of Central America. He comes to my mind, a figure of adventure, out of a tropical upland where the bright-plumed parrots screech. He brings the bright feathers and stories about curing a mule for a native of Nicaragua; about the fine land waiting for development, and about the power 5,000 Indian men would be down there when a revolution broke out.
To my mind Little Bison is a type of promise. He lives by his wits. And that is my definition of a professional man. Not to follow worn trails, but to be ready to break out new ones—let this be the aim of those of us who enter the professions—whatever they be.
The professions are wide open to us. We have the strength and the steadiness of will to make good in them. Prejudice against the Indian simply does not exist among the people who can make or mar a career. Always the climb for the top will be going on. The Indian who fits himself for the company of those at the top will go up. He will go as swiftly and as surely as his white brother. There is no easy, short road up—either for the Indian or for the white man. Conscientious, thorough training, character, hard work—the formula for success in the professions, is simple. I believe the average Indian would rather work his brain than his hands. That has been accounted our misfortune. I think it will be our salvation. There is room for us in the professions, there is a wide market for brains.10
My friends, I am an Indian; I was born and raised among them; but it has taken me a long time to figure out a satisfactory explanation of my interest in them. Naturally, we are not very much interested in people we are familiar with. I find this interest growing all the time. For an explanation my mind has gone back to a process of building up an ideal which went on in my youth.
I never read very much good literature when I was young—mostly the novels that you can buy for five cents and which are published in Augusta, Maine. They were not usually standard works, however full of romance and blood they might be, so it happened that I did not read Aesop’s Fables until I went to college. Doubtless, there is a craving in every child’s mind which Aesop’s Fables satisfies. I did not find them, so I built up a sort of symbolism of my own to take their place.
I remember when I was quite small the family acquired a gray mule about 15½ hands high. He was a solid, square-rigged type of mule. I grew up alongside that mule, and had a lot to do with him personally. At first, I thought he was about the meanest and laziest and orneriest mule I ever heard of. Every time I turned away or dropped the whip, that mule would slow down. It happened that it was I usually who had to make him hustle; one day I would be driving him to the plow, the next day I would be driving him to town for something. Later on, the family acquired some cattle, and I was promoted to the job of cowboy. My first mount, as a matter of course, was that obstinate, lazy gray mule. For a long time I felt that Heaven for me would be to get rid of that mule forever. No such luck. The mule flourished, and grew more vigorous with age.
After awhile, I began to ask myself what there was about this mule that was enduring; what it was that was turning my impatience into genuine liking. It seemed to me that he grew more desirable; a little more of a friend; and it came to a point when I would rather have that gray mule assigned to me than any other animal on the ranch. When I grew older, about 16 or 17, the mule about the same age, I found that he had survived a great many of the horses we had acquired at the same time we bought him. I don’t know whether that mule is dead yet. When I left the ranch, and went to college, he was still a pretty good mule, still going strong.
Very slowly, as I have battered away at the world with my pen, an Aesop’s Fable of my own has been worked out in my mind. I learned that in the story of the gray mule was a moral, and it was up to me somehow to utilize that moral. Since taking my farewell of him, I have held six positions as writer and editor, each a little better than the one before. I am about to go on to number seven. There was a lesson in that plugging, enduring gray mule that I tried hard to learn. I have tried to apply it, not only to my own life, but, also, by way of explanation, to other Indians who have grown up under my eye and are doing the work of grown-ups. I have thought to myself—and this is a tribute to the Indian—we are a great deal like that gray mule. We are lazy. You have got to spur us on, but we are dependable. You know we are there.
That gray mule could not outrun a pampered yearling, but he always got the yearling! The more I go about among the Indians, the more firmly convinced I am that you can depend on them. They are there. They deliver the goods in the end.
From many schools throughout the country, trained Indians have gone out to show their quality. I know a good many of them who have not been at Carlisle or any other Indian school. Indian friends of mine, too, are graduates of Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Columbia, Stanford, and of other colleges, and they have always panned out. School-trained or not, it is a habit of theirs to make good. They have always justified my reading of the gray mule fable.
On behalf of the gray mule, and on behalf of these Indians from other schools and all sorts of trades, I thank you very sincerely for this opportunity to speak to you this evening.11
Long time ago, when any little boy among the Indians wanted to stay inside the house and watch the men play the wheel and stone game, instead of going out with his bow and arrows to the woods, the old men would call him to the door and whisper:
“Little one, if you stay to watch the gamblers, you will get a striped head like the bullfrog.” And then the little boy would ask why the bullfrog has a striped head. And this is the story which the old men would tell:
Way over in the west, beyond the place where the sun goes down, and right next door to Thunder, was the house of Untsaiyi, the greatest gambler that ever lived. People called him “Brass”—he was so hard that he never took any pity on those who came to play with him, but after he had won all the fine things they owned, he would ask them to play for their lives, and when he had won for the last time, he would kill the one who played with him.
In all the time that “Brass” lived beyond the gate of the west, only Thunder ever succeeded in winning any games from him.
Now, the bullfrog had heard about Untsaiyi a great many times, but he did not believe that “Brass” was such a fine gambler as people said he was.
Once, the bullfrog said this to the Wild Boy of the woods.
“Then,” said the Wild Boy, “you will know. And before you go, I will call on ‘Brass’ and fix up a plan. Goodbye!” And the Wild Boy ran off.
After the bullfrog had studied over what the Wild Boy had told him, he thought he would try a game with “Brass.” So, he packed up some parched corn and started out to call on Untsaiyi. No one ever came to the house of Untsaiyi who was not given a hearty welcome and asked to eat and drink with him. So, when “Brass” and the bullfrog were eating their supper together, they talked about what they would gamble for when the game began by the light of the fire.
Now, the wild boy had already been to talk with Untsaiyi, and had told him what the last wager was to be. But “Brass” put his hand under his chin as if he was studying hard about what to say, and finally spoke:
“When we get to the last wager, this is what we shall gamble for: the one who wins shall scratch some marks on the head of the one who loses.”
“All right” said the bullfrog, “and I am ready to begin.”
So, they sat down in the light of the fire and began to play the wheel and stone game. And time after time, as the wheel rolled on the stone, Untsaiyi would cry out:
“You see, I have won!” And then the bullfrog would pay the wager. After a long time the bullfrog had nothing more to bet, and then “Brass” cried out:
“This time, the winner will scratch some deep marks in the head of the loser!” And the bullfrog nodded and sent the wheel rolling.
“You have lost!” cried Untsaiyi, and he came to where the bullfrog sat and ran his fingernails deep across the head of the bullfrog. And to this day you will see the yellow stripes across his head.12