THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
H. L WADSWORTH, Superintendent
VOLUME 18
MARCH, Î9U
NUMBER i
SAVE THE BABIES
C O M M IS SIO N E R S E E L S ’ P L E A TO I N D I A N S E R V IC E
EM PLO YEES
1 ^ ’ ANY excellent articles have been addressed to Indian
Service employees by Hon. Cato Sells, Commissioner
of Indian Affairs, since he became the head of the
Indian Bureau, but there is something of the heart
appeal in the following article which in our judge
ment places it in a class by itself:
In an address before the Congress on Indian Prog
ress held at San Francisco in August of last year I said:
“ It is our chief duty to protect the Indian’s health and to save him from
premature death. Before we educate him, before we conserve his prop
erty, we should save his life. If he is to be perpetuated, we must care
for the children. We must stop the tendency of the Indian to dimin
ish in number, and restore a condition that will insure his increase.
Every Indian hospital bed not necessarily occupied with those suffering
from disease or injury should be available for the mother in childbirth.
It is of first importance that we begin by re-establishing the health and
constitution of Indian children. Education and protection of property
are highly important but everything is secondary to the basic condition
which makes for the perpetuation of the race.”
1 hat thought has deepened its hold upon my convictions.
We must guarantee to the Indian the first of inalienable rights—the
right to live. No race was ever created for utter extinction. The
chief concern of all ethics and all science and all philosophies is life.
The Indian has demonstrated his humanity and his capacity for in
tellectual and moral progress amid conditions not always propitious and
I am eager to participate with all the favoring forces that contribute to
his racial triumph, believing as I do that when he comes to himself
as a factor in the modern world his achievements will enrich and brigh
ten the civilization of his native land.