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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (March 7, 1917)
4 3 MAY 8 The Chema wa American P r i n t e d a t C h e m a w a , O r e g o n , a n d D e v o t e d to t h e I n t e r e s t s o f I n d i a n E d u c a t i o n Vol. X IX W ednesday, M arch 7, 1917 A N IM PORTANT CHANGE No. 21 a joy and a privilege. Here is the point: Do not allow that first wandering of the mind, that first slack ening of the effort, for it is at that break the whole is shaken. It is far easier sliding down a snow’ bank than climbing it. So it is with the will. Once weaken in your determination and half the victory of years w’ill slip from you. Then, if you w’ould finally gain your purpose and thereby give to the world a useful life, you must be patient, vigilant in will, and con stant in effort. Oscar H . Lipps, who was recently appointed Chief Supervisor of Indian Schools, has been in the Indian Service ninteen years, served as teacher of reservation boarding schools in Utah and Minnesota, assistant superintendent of the Chilocco Indian School, super intendent of the Nez Perce reservation, Idaho, and District Supervisor of Indian Schools and Agencies for the Northwest District. He reorganized the school system in the Five Civilized Tribes, was a member of the Committee on New Course of Study V A L U E OF GOOD THOUGHTS for Indian Schools, and has for several y fears recently been superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School. Happiness is the art of keeping your mind occupied W hile superintendent of the Nez Perce Agency he with good and pleasant thoughts; for if your mind is established the first sanatorium for the treatment of filled w’ith such thoughts your bodily surroundings tuberculosis among Indians, and the first co-operative are of no great consequence. W hatever your circum day school for the education of whites and Indians stances in life may be, if you take a cheerful view of under joint federal and state control. He is the author your prospects and surroundings you have all that of ‘A Little History of the Navajos.” His home for tends to make happiness. The pow’er, however, of the past ten years has been in Idaho. controlling our thoughts is not so easily acquired. H . B. Peairs, whom Mr. Lipps succeeds, has been Like all other accomplishments, it comes only through appointed Superintendent of Haskell Institute, at much discipline and cultivation. Lawrence, Kansas. Mr. Peairs was formerly super Untrained minds have a tendency to produce evil intendent of Haskell. thoughts, envy, hatred, jealousy, malice, discontent, John Francis, Jr., now Chief of the Educational divi and unhappiness. But if w’e cultivate right thinking sion in the W ashington Office, succeeds Mr. Lipps as wre can substitute pleasant and soothing thoughts for Superintendent of the Carlisle School. those that fret and annoy. If you believe that some one has wronged you, you are not made more happy PU R PO SE by brooding over the circumstance. Instead, bring Purpose, for our Indian youth, is the generator of a to your memory some scene or event that has given useful life. The man without some sort of purpose you pleasure or profit, or give yourself up to some in life is but a part of the rubbish of the world. To bright dreams of the future, and you w’ill notice how’ have a purpose does not mean to aim at the impossible; much happier you will be. To make this change in it means merely setting the mind on some object or our thoughts is very easy, but it is a difficult m atter to accomplishment which is within the power of the in maintain this change, and that is wdiere the mental dividual to reach. It may be a profession, success in struggle comes in. Eternal vigilance is necessary in order that bright, business, a trade, a good home; or it may mean just to live a good, helpful life. Whatever it may be, one cheerful thoughts shall have the mastery, but every requirement is positively necessary—that is constancy. time the good thought comes to displace a bad one it Probably every young person starts out in life with gains strength for the next conflict. By persistent a purpose that fills his whole horizon. Time passes, effort in w’atching the coming and going of your difficulties arise, and soon the purpose begins to grow thoughts and by displacing the unhappy thoughts with something that is agreeable you can make your dim, the mind wanders from the once-absorbing ob mind a citadel of peace and contentment. Our great ject, and the effort to attain it becomes weakened. need, therefore, is to know how to change annoying Little by little the horizon fades and life ceases to be thoughts for those that give pleasure.
