See the Essays section for a profile of Elizabeth Bender (1888–1965).
I do not intend to tire the reader with long drawn out stories of broken treaties, the misappropriation of Indian money, nor do I intend to dwell on the subject of how we have been starved and pampered on various reservations. Lamenting over past abuses, hanging around Indian trading stores, demanding certain rights, does not solve the Indian Problem. We hear a great deal about developing leaders for leadership and are apt to forget that our girls are to be the sources of such leadership, too, for they represent our homemakers and homekeepers.
In traveling over this great country of ours, I have noticed that the best schools, the most productive farms, the most sanitary conditions exist only where educated fathers and mothers have given their sons and daughters the proper home life. But as I have traveled through the Indian country, I have not seen many homes on this order. The conditions are just the reverse. The unkempt homes, which are breeding places for filth and disease, outnumber the homes of cleanliness and Christian training, and thousands and thousands of acres of Indian lands, rich in undeveloped resources, are lying idle.
The time was when the Government school system met the necessary requirements, but it lacks in the fact that it does not teach our girls and boys the real value of labor and the cost of materials. They are not impressed with money values and how much it means to make a living for themselves.
Can we expect to develop great, strong Christian leaders in spite of such home conditions? Yes, we can. We can take our youth away from home, send them off to such schools as Haskell, Carlisle, or Hampton for a period of years, give them an even better education than these now offer, and have them associate with high minded instructors who shall teach them that the home is the very core of any civilization, that the ideal home shall permeate its environment and bring it into keeping with that of their school. When we shall have done this no girl will be ashamed of her people or disgusted with her lot.
Often in the Indian country we find father speaking intelligent English, using the latest implements in farming, thrifty and industrious. But you wonder why his home does not show the result of his labor. You will have to look farther. Does the mother speak English? Does she know anything about food values? Has she had the training of Home Economics and Domestic Science? Does she know anything about organizing Mothers’ Clubs and Girls’ Clubs for the advancement and betterment of her community? You will find that that side of her education has been neglected. As no people advance any faster than their women and the home is considered to be the core of the Indian problem, my plea is that these Indian girls should receive a fair chance.
Nearly all the large Indian schools have trade schools in which our young men are taught the various trades, but the Indian girls must day after day do the menial drudgery of the school, working in the laundry, washing dishes, with little time for recreation and play.
More and more we are beginning to appreciate the fact that the Indian girl along with this sort of work must be given a thorough course in Home Economics and Domestic Science. The Indian girl was naturally a homemaker even in the days of savagery. She it was who pitched tent, tilled the little garden, and at that early stage made something of a home for her roaming people.
Carlisle, for the first time in its history, has installed such a course. We have this year built a model home cottage, in which the girls get a real taste of home-life for a month. Here our girls are being trained how to cook over a common stove, to take care of kerosene lamps, and to prepare three meals a day in the most wholesome and economical way. In this model cottage she is to learn the art of cooking cereals, vegetables, and the preparation and serving of family meals. Invalid cookery, caning of fruits and vegetables, jelly making and pickling will be a part of the course. She will also learn how to do the plain, everyday sewing, so needful in a home of this kind.
I believe that this sort of training will give her a broader outlook on life and make her realize the tremendous responsibility that confronts her as a homemaker. She will look upon her lot as a sacred calling and appreciate the dignity and nobility of labor.
Along with Home Economics and Domestic Science, have her realize that she, too, has a social problem. Have her study sociology in its broadest sense so that she shall know the relation of character building to health, recreation, business, and racial welfare.
One writer tells us that “Education is not simply the art of developing powers and capacities of the individual; it is rather the fitting of individuals for efficient membership. It should fit one for social service. It should create the good citizen.”
My plea is for a broader and more comprehensive education for the girl than has ever been given before.
Lastly, we must teach our girls to go out as strong, Christian leaders, for not only must they be good homemakers but also soul savers. I have been in some schools where this side of Christian education was sadly lacking. Do we not boast of belonging to a Christian Nation and are we not all seeking after the same God? Then teach my people more about the Great Spirit, so that they too shall be morally strong. Our girls as well as our boys must have great and compelling ideals. These are practical lines along which our girls should be educated. I think that something on this plan will produce the homes we wish to see in the Indian country, the Great West, the land of wonderful opportunities.
We are a people that have always lived in the country, fished in the rivers, lived on its hills, raced upon its plains and that is where our homemakers belong. The West is where we wish to solve the Indian Problem, building up better schools, better churches, and better homes.1
After being graduated from Hampton in 1907, I accepted a Government appointment in Montana, and in the fall of 1909 started on my new and untried work—that of a teacher among my own people.
I was sent to work among the Blackfeet Indians who are located in the northwestern part of Montana. They are on a large reservation comprising many thousands of acres of excellent grazing land, which, however, is not well adapted to farming owing to the short season. According to tradition, the name “Blackfeet” was given to these Indians by another tribe with whom they had been fighting, and by whom they had been chased across a broad expanse of burned prairie, thus making their moccasins black.
It was with a feeling of uncertainty that I got off at the little station in Montana on that cold, raw October night, and made my way into a dark and dingy waiting room. In one corner of the room was a sputtering lamp that tried to give a little light through a black chimney. As I glanced about, I saw a long-haired Indian sprawled upon the floor, wrapped in his blanket, snoring contentedly, and not at all concerned with the casual stranger who had happened in. On the bench was an Indian mother, cuddling in her arms a sickly-looking baby and trying to soothe its fretfulness. I learned afterward that they were all of the same family, and were there to take a midnight train in order to see if they could get medical aid which the government doctor could not adequately give the sick infant.
After an hour’s wait, the stage arrived and conveyed me to the small town of Browning which was two miles from the station. The stage stopped at the Kipp Hotel, and there I was to put up for the night. As I entered, many men were sitting around the heater; some were smoking and one or two cowboys were rolling cigarettes. Gradually the conversation ceased, and the stranger was the center of interest.
The next morning I called at the agent’s office and made it known that I was the new teacher. He welcomed me cordially and told me that the school team would be up at noon to get the beef supply and I could go back with it. The school was situated seven miles from the railroad station, beautifully located in the Cut Bank Valley. Looking westward one could see the Rocky Mountains in all their ruggedness and grandeur. Old Chief Mountain stood out grim and silent, separating the Blackfeet Reservation from the Dominion of Canada. Eastward one could see the rolling plains dotted with herds of cattle and horses belonging to these Indians.
My first day in school was a very trying one. I had, in the primary room, boys and girls ranging from five to fifteen, some of whom could speak English, but others had no command of the language. I asked the children what had been the lesson of the previous day and no one volunteered to tell. After a long silence one little girl had courage enough to tell me that they had not had any school, although they had entered the first of September.
On Saturdays and Sundays the parents came to see their children. Their coming was heralded by the barking of the many dogs that always follow the train of an Indian team.
On Saturdays the children were dressed in clean dresses and their hair tidily combed for the occasion. What a contrast they were to the parents, who came wearing their gaily colored blankets and shawls, moccasins on their feet, and the fathers often with their hair in long braids. The fathers and mothers often painted their faces in vivid red and yellow. Yet these same parents were willing to send their children to school, and were anxious to have them get the things they themselves had not had the opportunity of getting. They all congregated in the girls’ sitting room and enjoyed themselves visiting their children. On the floor one would perhaps see an old grandmother squatting and smoking her pipe filled with Indian tobacco, “kinnikinic.”
Our school children celebrated the Holidays in much the same way people would in any community. However, many of the parents looked on, not knowing what was being said, but paternal pride showed itself when their children took part in the school program.
The children enter school the first of September and remain until about the middle of June, with an occasional visit home on Saturday. They have lessons only two hours and a half daily, devoting the rest of the time to industrial work. When the mild Chinook winds begin to blow, and Mother Nature begins to waken the sleeping buds and flowers, the Indian child gets the wanderlust. He longs for that home, humble though it may be, and for that pony of his which has been idle all winter, and which has fattened on the bunch grass, severe as the winter may have been on the range. The Blackfeet have many horses and we are not surprised to learn that the boys learn to ride almost as soon as they are able to walk. These spring days are days of worry to the teacher. Sometimes, when she goes to her schoolroom, only girls are to be seen, as the boys have decided to round up their ponies, or those who have not the courage to go home are off drowning ground squirrels. Indian police are sent out to various homes to round up the truants. Sometimes they manage to get them back in two or three days, but more often it takes ten.
The teacher who enters the Indian Service is called upon to do many things besides actual academic work. One fall when school opened I had to assume the duties of matron for a month. This was a most trying time, as in the case of the Blackfeet children many came back to school fresh from a summer of camp life, and not always as clean as one would like to have them. Then there were homesick children to cheer; the arranging of details in laundry, sewing room, kitchen, dining room and buildings; the getting of sleepyheads out of bed every morning; keeping a watchful eye on those who tried to evade work; taking care of sick and children, doctoring trachomatous eyes; and many other duties.
Another time I was the children’s cook for three weeks. One would hardly expect that accomplishment in a teacher, but Hampton does expect it of her graduates, and I knew what my training had been. One thing I remember very vividly in those three weeks of experience, and that was what the children said, “Miss Bender sure can cook good beans.”
I got the parents interested in the field-day sports which were held in the spring. Then, with the aid of a supervisor and the principal, we got the parents to donate $84 to purchase basketballs, footballs, a baseball outfit, and indoor games to be used when the weather was severe and the children had to be confined in small playrooms. Up to this time they had had nothing in the way of games, and consequently the boys had spent much of their time sneaking off to the school dairy herd and breaking calves to ride.
I became well acquainted with some of the parents and visited them in their homes. Some had comfortable homes that were orderly and neat, but the majority of them had only one room, no floor but the dirt, and two windows, those usually with an eastern exposure. Many of the homes are excellent breeding places for trachoma and tuberculosis.
This brings me to the horrors of trachoma and my observation of it among the Plains Indians. It is a disease that without medical attention gradually impairs the sight until blindness results. Upon the examination of one hundred and fifty children in our school, forty-three were found to be afflicted with trachoma. The Government sent out specialists about three years ago, and they found that, out of the Indian population of 300,000, 50,000 had trachoma.
When the treatment of trachoma began I was called on to treat all cases with bluestone. There was a marked improvement in all the cases that we had treated for over six months. I do not know how soon they would have been pronounced cured, as I left in March, having received a transfer to the Fort Belknap Reservation. Here the conditions were even worse. Someone told me that this was “the one-eyed reservation,” and it seemed almost true. Here we had fifty children enrolled, and all but six had trachoma. I cite these instances because I feel so strongly these problems that are confronting our people, and they are problems that we can all help to remedy, whether our vocation in life is that of a teacher, carpenter, nurse, or a blacksmith. If you cannot get a doctor to treat this disease, be interested enough to treat the cases in your own community.
Think of it! Nearly 30% of all Indian children are in danger of becoming blind. Nearly 17,000 Indian boys and girls are in danger of complete blindness.
We may talk about demanding our rights, but unless we are willing to assume responsibilities we cannot presume to make such a demand. The missionary field for service and for consecrated workers is broad. What a wonderful opportunity for some of our young men to become doctors, fitted to cope with trachoma and tuberculosis. Without medical attention thousands of men and women will not be self-supporting, and they will be deprived of their usefulness.
We need strong Christian workers in the “Indian Country.” A number of the Indians are Christians, but the teacher who works among them sees the horrors of the grass dance, sun dance, the medicine lodge, and the use of mescal.
My white friends say, “Let them continue these old dances, they are so picturesque.” Is there any picturesqueness when a performer in the sun dance drops dead from exhaustion? Such a scene I witnessed up at Glacier National Park, where the Indians were dancing day and night for the benefit of guests at this summer resort. The day when the sun dance and medicine dance played an important part of their religious rites has passed. This form of religious ceremony has deteriorated with the advance of civilization, and we need to give the Indian Christianity and not paganism.2