While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
A specter that was always lifting up its
head to haunt the Indian Service throughout the last century
was the demand that the Bureau be transferred from the
Interior Department to the War Department. This ghost too
danced with Sitting Bull and his band. With the end of
Sitting Bull, its power ended.
During these
days of the Messiah craze General Miles
repeatedly asked that "the Sioux agencies be
turned over absolutely to the military
authorities." In replying to this request
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs pointed
out that "the great body of these Indians
are friendly, submissive to authority, and
engaged in peaceful pursuits." He agreed
with Turning Hawk; that "Peace has won the
day."
So the event proved.
Putting the affairs of the Sioux under the
control of the War Department would have
been a confession that warfare with him was,
if not actually desired, at least
unavoidable; that dealings with the Indian
were expected to be on the basis of war
instead of peace. This confession the
Government has not again been forced to
make.
During all the days of
warfare a less dramatic but more permanently
effective campaign had been going on among
the Sioux. Even before the Minnesota
outbreaks the eastern or Santee branch,
known also in those days as the Sioux of the
Mississippi, were becoming friendly to the
arts and ways of the white men around them.
In their new lands in Nebraska and Dakota,
they continued to progress in those arts. It
was a harder task to wean the western
branch, the Sioux of the Missouri, away from
their savage life; but even here the work
had its measure of success. Engaged in it
were the employees of the Government service
and many preachers, teachers and physicians
sent through missionary agencies.
Up to 1872 the Government did not as a rule
establish schools for Indian children. The
funds appropriated by Congress for
educational purposes were applied by pay for
the support and tuition of pupils in schools
maintained by missionary boards. But about
this time the establishment of schools
entirely under government management,
supported by appropriations, became more
frequent. At first these were day schools
chiefly, but as an official report for 1873
pointed out:
"Instruction in
the day schools merely, except among Indians
who are already far along in civilization,
is attempted at great disadvantage on every
hand….It is well-nigh impossible to teach
Indian children the English language when
they spend twenty hours out of the
twenty-four in the wigwam, using only their
native tongue. The boarding-school, on the
contrary, takes the youth under constant
care, has him always at hand, and surrounds
him by an English-speaking community, and,
above all, gives him instruction in the
first lessons of civilization, which can be
found only in a well-ordered home.
The following two decades saw a great
development of the school system for
Indians, and the establishment of many
school for the Sioux, especially among those
bands whose more settled life and greater
amenability to instruction gave
encouragement to such a policy. There were
schools in operation, churches and
missionaries at work, and Sioux living in
houses and tilling the soil, all over the
Dakota country the very year of the Custer
tragedy; and when the Seventh Cavalry had
its revenge at Wounded Knee, in 1890 there
were in operation among the different bands
of Sioux no fewer that forth-day school and
ten boarding schools, with a combined
capacity of about twenty five hundred.
The civilizing efforts had by no means been
confined to the younger generation. The
purpose of the Indian Bureau had uniformly
been to transform the nomads of the plains
into settled farmers; and while it was an
ideal that seemed also ridiculously
impossible of attainment, yet is gained
ground, and year-by-year more of the Sioux
settled upon plots of their own and learned
the use of the plow and the hoe.
But so long as the reservations remained the
property of the tribes as a whole it was
felt to development that would come with the
receipt of individual rewards for individual
effort. A great wave of popular sympathy for
the Indian spread over the country during
the Eighties; particularly in those sections
where the memories of Indian wars were not
so close nor so keen. The most far-reaching
result of this popular reaction against the
military attitude was the General Allotment
Act, passed in 1887, which provided that
reservations should be broken up into
individual holdings, and a patent for his
share-usually a hundred and sixty acres per
individual-issued to each member of the
tribe. For twenty-five years this land was
to be held in trust, inalienable and
untaxable; and during this period it was
expected that the Indian would learn the
ways of industry and foresight so that at
its close he might be able to meet the
ordinary world of affairs on the same basis
as any other member of society. As a further
means of accelerating his development and
raising his status, he was to become a
citizen, both of the United States and of
the State in which he lived, from the date
of receiving his allotment.
Allotting parties were already at work upon
a number of Sioux reservations while the
ghost dance craze was at its height.
Sitting Bull and the hostiles generally,
opposed the idea of receiving lands in
severalty; but nine-tenths of the Sioux were
ready for the change. It was a far-reaching
change indeed, the first step on the path
which led to the disappearance of tribal
control and the emergence of the Indian as
an individuals nor reserved for some common
use such as pasturage, should be thrown open
to settlement and purchase; the purchase
moneys being collected by the Government for
the benefit of the Indians of the
reservation.
This opening of
the reservations was to serve a dual
purpose. The money derived from the lands
was to provide a fund; which would give the
Indian the buildings, implements and other
necessities of his life as a farmer. And the
approach of the white farmer as a neighbor
would surround him with the kind of life;
which it was hoped he would lead thereafter.
He would be in the midst of the white man's
farms and towns and schools, and would learn
by example as well as by precept.
The plan was put in operation thirty years
ago. A single generation is but a brief time
in which to make the transfer from tribal
life to individual independence, from the
buffalo hunt to the labor of farm or town,
from the warpath to the schoolhouse door.
That a substantial proportion of the Sioux
have made the change is matter for
congratulation to both whites and Indians.
There have been, besides, some very serious
hindrances to development, growing out of
the mistaken idea of kindness. For a long
time rations were issued to all the Sioux;
even yet a large number are fed regularly at
the expense of the nation. In the days when
the buffalo had vanished and no
opportunities for self-help offered
themselves, the giving of rations was a
necessity if the Sioux were not to starve.
But is was a necessity that worked a great
deal of harm. It removed all incentive to
effort and it undermined the self-respect of
the Indian. Today, except in the case of the
really helpless, it is a pauperizing force
that stands in the way of much good that
might be accomplished. To this reactionary
agency must be added the annuity payments
that come without labor and are so much more
attractive than the rewards of real effort.
It takes undoubted stamina to resist
insidious influences such as these.
Yet many have resisted; and many Sioux
Indians today, children perhaps when Sitting
Bull made medicine for the last time, are
now leading an existence very like that of
their whit neighbors in the lands of the
Dakotas. The till the soil and tend their
herds; their children attend the little
public schools that dot the countryside and
study and play with the children of the
whites. The younger generations grow up
together, old enmities forgotten.
The law has provided that an Indian
landholder may apply for a patent in fee to
his allotment. Inquiry is then made into his
character and record; and if in the judgment
of the Secretary of the Interior these
establish his ability to handle his own
affairs, a "certificate of competency" is
issued and he may thereafter manage his own
property free from governmental supervision.
It would be presumed that an
Indian thus officially declared "competent"
would no longer offer any problem either to
the government or to society in general. But
the presumption outruns the fact. Too often
the issuance of such a certificate has been
merely the preliminary formality leading to
the sale of the Indian's land. Actual
foresight, careful weighing of benefits, is
still far from the childlike primitive mine.
The price to be obtained by the sale of his
acres is a very attractive bird in the hand.
The Indian is apt to look no further ahead
than this immediate benefit, unmindful of
the day when these easily acquired funds
shall have been dissipated and the problem
of further subsistence shall arise.
So many of these "patent in fee Indians,"
citizens who have sold their lands and
wasted their inheritance, are to be found
among the different bands of the Sioux.
Often they are drifting about, living upon
the easy generosity of those who have not
yet been declared independent of
supervision. But in the end there will be a
realization that they are no more exempt
than others from the rule that man must earn
his bread by the sweat of his brow.
This necessary connection between labor and
productiveness is the greatest civilizing
force the human race has known. Too easy
living conditions produce an indolent
people, lacking in initiative and barren of
accomplishment. The need of preparation for
the winter season developed all the
foresight and industry the aboriginal Indian
had to show. By issues of food, clothing and
money, by fostering care of his property,
the nation has taken away from his even such
incentive as the change of seasons used to
offer him. The policy was well meant but the
results were often far from good.
So the Indian who can learn but stumblingly
at best all the intricate ways of an alien
civilization, has to overcome not only his
own native handicaps, but the obstacles as
well that the mistakes of the white man have
imposed upon him; and in some cases he must
rid himself of the gifts he has received
before he can learn to demand for himself
what life has to bestow upon those who
combine effort and desire. Others will learn
less painfully, will rise from the plane on
which circumstances have placed them without
the preliminary descent to need. But
necessity is the stern teacher from whom we
must all learn at last. In this school many
a Sioux Indian is making real strides in
intelligence and application.
At the Advisory Council of One Hundred
called together by Secretary of the Interior
Work in December, 1923, for the discussion
of Indian problems, there was present a
Sioux three-quarters blood, who had spent
the first fifteen years of his life in the
wild ways of the hostile bands; who had
emerged from such a war camp to accept the
ways and learning of the white man, to
become physician, lecturer and author of
many books. There was present a Sioux woman
known all over the country for her eloquence
in her people's behalf. And there came also
to that gathering General Nelson A. Miles,
veteran of many wars against the Sioux. Both
conqueror and conquered had but one desire;
to work for the best interests of the Indian
race.
But is is not to the special examples of
success among the Sioux that we must look,
encouraging as it is to realize the shining
records of accomplishment occasional gifted
individuals have made. Nor is it those who
have met utter defeat and failure who must
influence our judgment, though the pessimist
would make us feel that they tell the whole
tale. It is the great mass of this numerous
people, coming step by step on a long, hard
pathway, that give us the real story. And in
the end it will be a story we shall be glad
to read.
During the time when
the late Franklin K. Lane was Secretary of
the Interior, there was a declaration of
policy under which competency commissions
issued many certificates and released many
Indians from further supervision by the
Government, the versatile Secretary devised
a pretty little ceremony which should
impress upon the mind of the Indian the
importance of the new stage upon which he
was entering. John Strikes-the-Bear would
first send an arrow far into the blue as a
symbol of the life he was leaving behind;
then he would plow a furrow as an indication
of the productive industry to which he would
henceforth apply himself.
"I
have shot my last arrow," he would say. "Now
I take the plow. The straight furrow shall
show the path that lies before me. From this
day on I follow the new way."
It was a bit of drama such as the Sioux
heart might delight in; and it may have
inspired many a young man or woman to
renewed effort in what is after all a
struggle. A transition period is hard for
all, young or old; hardest for the
generation that must span the gap between
the two stages of civilization. The warriors
who fought with Sitting Bull are old men
now. They will draw their rations and their
per capita payments but a few years longer.
The children who are being born today will
grow up in a life not greatly unlike that of
the white folk about them. But those who
have heard in their infancy the war cry, who
have seen their fathers lay down the gun and
the scalping knife and must see their
children take up the prosaic hoe, are in
harder case. Their hearts may often stay
with the old while their steps go forward
with the new. And that their steps sometimes
falter, that they sometimes lag upon the
pathway, need cause no wonder. Slowly,
slowly comes any people out of old faiths
and old customs.
So though
the tepee still stands beside the house of
wood, though incantations are still heard
where the sick man lies, we can only be
surprised that so much of the old life has
vanished that so much of the new has taken
its place; that so many steps have already
been taken by these sturdy people on their
strange way, the "white man's road."
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