6
THS
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
I look for the time to come, and that time is not very faraway, when
school districts will be buying farms for the use of their teachers that
their schools may do the work for which they are established. There
are no country schools of this kind in Oregon at the present. I am in
formed that there is one in the state of Washington. Our Superintend
ent of Public Instruction is an up-to-date educator and I look for great
attainments along this line.
THE IN D IA N S’ CURSE
C O M M IS SIO N E R S E E L S O N T IIE M A T T E R O F W H IS K E Y
AM ONG IN D IA N S
E are in receipt of a circular letter from Judge Cato Sells,
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which is mighty nearly
a classic in clear and forceful language and dic
tion. We deem it worthy of the widest publicity, and
are pleased to be able to assist in the same. The article
as follows is an excerpt from an address delivered by
Judge Sells on the evening of February 20, 1914:
“ I believe that the greatest present menace to the American Indian is
whiskey. It does more to destroy his constitution and invite the ravages
of disease than anything else. It does more to demoralize him as a man,
and frequently as a woman. It does more to make him an easy prey to
the unscrupulous than everything else combined. If I say nothing more
to you tonightthat leaves an impression, let it be this one thought: Let
us save the American Indian from the curse of whiskey.
“ We have a force of men,engaged in the suppression of the liquor traf*
fic. That is their special business. But it is my business, and it is
your business, to do everything we can without injecting ourselves of
fensively into the work of others or assuming a duty that is not properly
ours, to create an atmosphere, and suggest conditions that will be help
ful in this respect, and above all to be a personal object lesson inviting
the Indian to banish liquor, rather than to be guilty of anything that
may cause him to look upon one of us as a justification for doing that
which leads him to the destruction caused by the use of whiskey.
“ There is nothing that could induce me, since I have taken the oath
of office as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to touch a single drop of any
sort of intoxicating liquor, and this regardless of my attitude on the pro
hibition question.
“ As a matter of good faith to our treaty relationship, to legislative
enactments, to the Congress which appropriates $100,000 a year for the