CHAPTER XXI.

HON. GEORGE G. VEST, UNITED STATES SENATOR, AND CATHOLIC METHODS OF EDUCATING THE INDIANS AS EXEMPLIFIED AT THE ST. IGNATIUS INDUSTRIAL BOARDING SCHOOLS.

The Honorable gentleman whose name heads this chapter served on a special committee appointed at the wish of the House of Representatives of the United States in 1883, to visit the Indian reservations of the West. During the month of September of the same year he came to the Mission of St. Ignatius. His appreciation of the methods followed by the Fathers and the Sisters in educating the Indians, will best appear from his own words, spoken in the United States Senate on May 12, 1884:

In all my wanderings in Montana last summer I saw but one ray of light on the subject of Indian education. I am a Protestant--born one, educated one, and expect to die one--but I say now that the system adopted by the Jesuits is the only practical system for the education of the Indian, and the only one that has resulted in anything at all.

Here, making his own the works of another Senator (Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts), who has said that he reason of the success of the Jesuits with the Indian was that they devoted their whole lives to the work, he confirms the statement by referring to Father A. Ravalli, whom he had visited "at his little room" at St. Mary's, and who, "though bed-ridden for some years, was still administering to the wants of the Indians."

This man's whole life was given up to the work, and what is the result? Today the Flat Heads are one hundred per cent in advance of any other Indians in point of civilization, at least in Montana. Fifty years ago the Jesuits were among then, and today you see the result.

The Senator enters here into the details of the industrial and school-room training given in their respective departments by the

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Fathers and Sisters to the boys and girls in their keeping, then he continues: "We had a school examination there, lasting through two days. U undertake to say now that never in the States was there a better examination than I heard at that Mission of children of the same ages with those I saw there."

After referring to the different industries in which the Indian children were being trained:

I asked the Father in charge (add Senator Vest) to give me his experience as an Indian teacher and to state what had given the school sits remarkable success. He said it resulted from the fact that they trained both the boys and girls. Here is the whole of it in a single sentence. I call the attention of the Senators, who are interested in the question, to this singular point--when a class graduates in a male school, a class also graduates in the female school. From the fact that the boys and girls are both educated, by their similarity of tastes and by their advance in civilization, they become husband and wife, and as soon as that took place the Jesuits and the Agent would build them a little house, break up a piece of ground, and the single couple became a nucleus of civilization and Christianity. You must educate both sexes in order that one shall support the other, in order that they may go out to battle the barbarism hand in hand; and until you do it, it is absolutely money thrown away to take either sex and undertake to educate them separately. The Jesuits have the key to the whole problem. They have learned it by actual experience, and the result is shown to-day. Let any Senator take the Northern Pacific Railroad and get off at Arlee and go to these missions, and he will see farms with cattle upon them, he will see Indians cutting logs, carrying them to saw-mills, getting out planks, and putting them into houses with their own hands. He will see then attend mass regularly.

Touching upon the subject of day-schools for Indians, Senator Vest makes the following declaration:

I saw not one day-school in the eleven tribes that we visited in Montana where the Indians had learned a solitary thing. As the Senator from Kansas said here today, and that part of his speech I heartily approve, "the attendance at such schools is on ration day." It is utterly impossible to educate the Indian if you let him go back to his family each day. Indians are utterly averse to the idea that a boy should work. It is right for women to work. They are made to work. Old Arlee, the second chief of the Flatheads, abused the school to me and denounced it, and I found his objection to it was.

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that he sent his boy over there and the Fathers put him to work in the field. In other words, as he said to me, "I did not send by boy there to be a squaw." He did not intend him to do degraded by any manual exercise at all. It is perfectly evident, that with all such prejudices, such feeling in regard to sustaining oneself with actual labor, it is impossible to do anything for these people or to advance them one single degree until you take their children away.

And what is the Senator's opinion about taking the Indian youth thousands of miles off their country in order to civilize and educate them?

I would not take them off to the States (he declares) where they would acquire ideas which are alien to Indian life. the Jesuits, I repeat, have found the secret of the whole system, and that is the boarding schools and industrial schools upon the Reservations, where the children are taken, and where the parents are permitted to see them.

Subsequently, in the same Genealogybug2005 ate Senator Vest expressed himself as follows:

In regard to educating both sexes, and in boarding schools, let me say a work to the Senator of Massachusetts. I do not speak with any sort of denominational prejudices in favor of the Jesuits. I was taught to abhor the whole sect. I was raised in that good old-school Presbyterian Church that looked upon the Jesuits as very much akin to the devil. But I say now, that if the Senator from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, will find me any tribe of Indians on the continent of North America, that approximates in civilization to the Flat Heads, who have been under the control of the Jesuits for fifty years, I will abandon my entire theory on the subject. I say that out of eleven tribes that I saw--and I say this as a Protestant--where they had Protestant missionaries they had not made a single solitary advance toward civilization, not one; and yet among the Flat Heads, where there were two Indian missions, you find farms, you find civilization, you find Christianity, you find the relation of husband and wife, and of father and child scrupulously observed. I say that one ounce of experience is worth a ton of theory at any time, and this I say, and this I know.

Six years later, July, 1890, when the Indian Appropriation Bill was under discussion in the Senate, Senator Vest spoke again in the same string and said (we quote from the Congressional Record of July 25, 1890):

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In my opinion, from personal observation, and not theory, are fixed upon this question. I say that the Jesuits have succeeded better than any other persons living in the education of these people, and I say this with every prejudice, if that be the proper work, against the Jesuits' organization, against the Society of Jesus; I say this as a Protestant, an educated Protestant, and I trust as a representative Protestant, and I know what I say to be true. I have seen the system which is denounced by the Commissioner of Indian affairs in operation. I simple accept results.

The words of Senator Vest need no comment; they speak for themselves. Perhaps no question of the present day has been more muddled and perverted by misrepresentation, hypocrisy and downright dishonesty than that of Indian education. Hence it is indeed refreshing to hear a man of the standing of Senator Vest speak as he does on the subject to Catholic Indian Schools, and this after looking into them officially, and notwithstanding all the prejudices in which he declares he was born and reared. We cannot but feel grateful to our work among the Indians, no less then for his brave, frank and manly way of expressing it.