CHAPTER XV.

EDUCATING THE INDIAN.

I.  President Grant's Peace Policy

From what has been said in the preceding chapter, the necessity of education, if the red man is to be civilized, appears so evident that one cannot but wonder why this indispensable means has been the last to be adopted. Yet it is a fact, that until the last twenty years, apart from what little had been accomplished by Catholic missionaries, nothing, absolutely nothing, was done in Montana toward lifting the Indians from barbarism by means of education.

The cause of this, however, is not far to seek. For, religion which along cold supply the moral means, could not furnish a sufficiency of the material resources necessary for the work; while the Government, which might supply these, could not undertake to teach religion and morality, as this lies beyond the sphere of its activity and competency.

The so-called "Peace Policy," inaugurated during the administration of President Grant, enlisted in the work the aid of Religion and the State. That policy rested on solid, rational ground. But unfortunately, however sound in principle, political chicanery, bigotry and prejudice soon found a way of perverting it. Without regard to the religious influences that had Christianized them, the tribes of Indians were parceled out among the different denominations. Catholic Indians were confided to Protestant preachers; the Catholic missionary was Genealogybug2005 arred and driven off the reservations, and what good had been done by Catholicity was soon destroyed by contrary influences. When this crying injustice became known, the sound, practical sense of the people was not slow to denounce it, and a more liberal application of the Grant policy was insisted upon.

Page 109

II. Contract Schools.

Convinced at last that the wild Indian could be civilized by education; that his equation was practically impossible without religion; that, while the Government could not enter into the sphere of religion, neither could religion be expected to feed and clothe these wards of the nation; convinced, further, that the red man could be civilized far less expensively by education than by the use of rifles and Gatling guns, and that, after having absorbed into the public domain in nearly all the Indian country, it was neither honorable, nor fair, not honest on the port of the United States to refuse to help the poor native, Congress moved the adoption of the Contract School system, as the proper means of solving the perplexing question of Indian civilization.

That this was a wise conclusion, and the only practical one, must appear manifest to every fair mind. We dare say, that, had such a course been adopted and carried out for the past fifty years, the Indian of the Rocky Mountains would be today civilized, industrious, and self-supporting.

Notwithstanding the satisfactory results which have followed its introduction; notwithstanding its fairness, justice and necessity, opposing forces are again hard at work to destroy the contract school. And what is to replace it? A new system of Indian education which, as declared by Senator G. G. Vest, "will cost the Government millions upon millions of dollars without any appreciable result."

III. Some Poetical Views About the Indian and His Education

We have before us the new system devised by the Harrison administration and forced upon the Indians, in place of the contract schools, by Mr. Morgan, the Indian Commissioner. What is the substance of the new scheme? It is to establish among the Indians non-sectarian schools, modeled on the public school system, where no religion is to be taught, and where the aborigines are to be educated by Government employees, to the exclusion of all Christian denominations. And what is the Indian to be taught according to the new system? Many wonderful things!

Page 110.

"One of the chief defects which have characterized the efforts made for their education," says Commissioner Morgan in his official report to Congress, "has been the failure to carry them far enough so that they (the Indian youth) might compete with the white youth who have enjoyed the far greater advantages of our system of education." "Higher education," says the Honorable gentleman, "is even more essential for them then it is for white children." "The high school," he declares further on, "should lift the Indian students into so high a plane of thought and aspiration as to render the life of the camp intolerable to them. The Indian high school, rightly conducted, will be the gateway from the desolation of the reservation into assimilation with our national life." "The Indian youth," he adds charmingly in another place, "should be instructed in their rights, privileges, and duties as American citizens' they should be taught to love the American flag. They should be imbued with a genuine patriotism." And again, "they should be initiated into the laws of the great natural forced, heat, electricity, etc., in their application to the arts and appliances of civilized life." "There is urgent need among them," he further tells us, "for a class of leaders of thought, lawyers, physicians, preachers, teachers, editors, statesmen and men of letters."

This, then, is the goal which commissioner Morgan and the Harrison administration propose to attain by their new scheme of Indian education. We have been for over a quarter of a century connected with the cause of the red man and his education in Montana; and with the knowledge and experience we have of these races, of their nature, their condition, their habits and peculiarities, the ambitions set forth by the Commissioner are to us so much poetical fancy, almost as interesting as it is amusing. In our humble opinion the plan has one very serious defect; it dwells in the realm of the man in the moon; it is not sublunary and hence it can have but little effect on the Indian of the mountains or the plains. Some of the beautiful things expatiated upon by the fertile imagination of the Hon. Commissioner might possibly pass as stories for the nursery, as a sort of fairy tale; but they cannot be taken seriously by serious-minded persons.

Page 111

We might quote a number of United States Senators, whose opinions on the subject as entirely at variance with those of Commissioner Morgan. We might refer, particularly, to the Hon. Mr. Jones, of Arkansas, who eloquent, keen, sarcastic thrusts at the esteem show him to be a gentleman of uncommon practical sense and ability.

We might further quote a number of others who spent their lives in working among the Indians; but we deem it unnecessary, for the simple reason that the plan itself is its own refutation.

To make the Indian schools non-sectarian is to eliminate Christianity from the education of the Indian; and to eliminate Christianity from the Indian education is to exclude from it the most essential element for success. Without Christianity the task is wretchedly hopeless. Material means are certainly necessary; enthusiasm and philanthropy may assist, but that which is to render material resources a means of genuine civilization, Christianity alone can supply. Enthusiasm soon cools off before the undreamed-of difficulties to be met with at every step in the work. Philanthropy of the true kind is only of the few; whereas to the many belong selfishness and greed.

Experience has amply proven that the Indian cannot be civilized except on Christian principles, through Christian methods, in Christian schools, by Christian teachers; or in very words of U. S. Senator Davis: "The education of the Indian cannot be accomplished but by a Sunday school which will last seven days in the week!"

"I assert," said the same Honorable gentleman on the floor of the U. s. Senate, "that history records with a pen which knows no faltering, that from the beginning of time, so far as the intercourse of white men with these barbarians is concerned, it is only where the influence of Christianity has been brought to bear upon them that they have made any progress toward civilization." * * * "The civilization of the American Indian has been the work of the Christian Church. The ministers of Christianity have been the forerunners of all that has been done in the way of their reclamation from barbarism." "I believe," said another United States Senator, the Hon, Mr. Jones, of

Page 112

Arkansas, "that educating the Indian without the aid of religion is an utter impossibility. I do not believe that you can ever make any civilization that is not based primarily upon the Christian religion."

We therefore submit that if, according to reason and experience, the Indian cannot be civilized independently of religion, then religion must needs be the first requirement of any system of education that is to benefit the red man. Hence appears how untenable is the position of Commissioner Morgan and every advocate of non-sectarian Indian education, who while professing to desire only the good of the Indian, exclude at the same time the one factor without which his civilization has so conclusively been demonstrated to be impossible.

But, after all, are these gentlemen sincere, are they thoroughly honest in their advocacy of the system? If so, then at least they are very inconsistent. For, passing over the fact that Bibles, hymn-books, and the like, supplied by the Harrison administration at the expense of the people, are plentiful in every government Indian school, why are these non-sectarian schools all in the hands of sectarian preachers? This glaring inconsistency was commented upon in the United States Senate July 25, 1890, by Senator Jones, of Arkansas, who spoke as follows: "It seems to me, if looking simply to non-sectarian teaching, it is not wise to select simply clergymen for the purpose of conducting these schools, and if we intend to keep ourselves entirely free from any entanglement of the sort, the schools ought to be put in charge of people who do not undertake to teach morals, or who have nothing to do with religion, at least."

What stronger proof do we need in support of our position than this inconsistency on the part of the advocates of non-sectarian Indian education? Either these gentleman are convinced that they can civilize the red man independently of religion, or that they cannot. If they are convinced that they can, why do they appear most determined to do away with it? If they believe that they cannot, why do they seek to exclude it with their non-sectarian humbug?

We shall see shortly the real aim of these worthies.