The Chemawa American, October 01, 1913, Page 10, Image 10

THE
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
5
GREAT MOVE AMONG IN D IA N S
V A R IO U S T R IB E S P A T R I O T I C A L L Y R A IS E F L A G S
HE following splendid and interesting article appear­
ed in a recent issue of the Oregonian, of Portland,
and we take pleasure in reprinting it:
Rodman Wanamaker, Philadelphia, and his emis­
sary, Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon, whose cards read
“ Leader of the Rodman Wanamaker Expedition of
Citizenship to the North American Indian,” have
entered on a campaign of civilizing the aborigines of the United States.
Sitting Bull, Man Afraid of His Horse, and \\ histling \\ ind hence­
forth are to be mere tradition like their warrior forefathers, and John
Doe and Richard Doe, American citizens are to supersede them. They
are to be not only good Indians, but respected members of the com­
munity, enjoying all the rights, privileges, responsibilities of any oth­
er citizen of the United States, in a word, taking up the burden of the
white man.
The work of humanity is already under way. Dr. Dixon, in the six
months of his missionary endeavors, already has visited more than half
of the Indian reservations, and his efforts so far are bearing fruit of un­
deniable quality and worth.
The sentiment is by no means new. Many have for years deplored
the condition of the North American Indian, but heretofore little has
been done to ameliorate that condition. Now the tide has actually
turned. The red man is coming into his own again.
Long enough, holds Mr. Wanamaker, has the down trodden North
American Indian suffered the indignities of an alien, and worse than an
alien, in his own land and original heritage of his ancestors. No long­
er is he to be known by the half condescending, half contemptuous
pseudonym of “ Poor Loo.” The conquering white race, says tins
modern Moses, has by force of arms, by guile, often by the most un­
scrupulous means in fact—methods many of which have left a big black
blot on the Nation’s escutcheon of honor—stripped the once noble red
man of his natural heritage, to build up a vast commercial nation of
white people on the flimsy principle of the greatest good for the great­
est number.
Might has ever been right in the matter of acquiring Indian lands,
until today the North American Indian is a charge on the Government
of the United States—a sort of tame human pet, of little more import­
ance as a factor in the country’s integrity than the buffalo which he
used to hunt, and like which he is all but extinct. He is penned off
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