The Chemawa American, December 25, 1929, Image 1

CHEMAWA
AMERICAN
Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education
Wednesday, Dec. 25, 1929
Vol. XXXI
No. 16
NEW INDIAN PROGRAM
LONG BOW
ARROWS
(F rom T he Q uiver
of
“O ld G orgon G raham ”)
When an ass gets the run of the pasture he finds
thistles.
When a fortune comes without calling, it’s apt
to leave without asking.
When a fellow does a little gambling on the side,
it’s usually on the wrong side.
Before being used, warm words should be run into
the cooling room until the animal heat is out of them.
The kittens of a wildcat are wildcats and there’s no
use counting on them being angoras.
There are more cases of hate at first sight than love
at first sight, and neither is of any special consequence.
When I go into a fellow’s office and see his desk
buried in letters with dust on them, I know that there
are cobwebs in his head.
No man really knows anything about women except
a widower, and he forgets it when he gets ready to
marry again.
Sometimes when you can’t kick a man out of the
back door without a row, you can get him to walk out
the front way voluntarily.
A fellow’s always in the wrong when he quarrels
with a women, and even if he wasn’t at the start he’s
sure to be before he gets through.
When a fellow tells you that it hurts to have to bor­
row, you can bet that the thought of having to pay is
going to tie him up into a bow-knot of pain.
The view that it is more important to put the Indians
on their feet, educationally, than it is for an institution
of learning for Indians to qualify as a so-called standard
high school is indubitably the practical one. It is likely
to have determined the policy of Federal authorities
with reference to Oregon’s noteworthy training school
at Chemawa, as indicated by Superintendent Lipps.
Algebra, for a single example, is extremely unlikely
to be serviceable in any ordinary plan of Indian edu­
cation. Industrial and home-making branches, as Dr.
Lipps has pointed out, have on the other hand a dis­
tinct value. But the item of first importance to the
revised program is in all probability its provision for
courses for adults. Curious paradoxes have arisen
from past failure to consider the problem of Indian
training as a whole. Youths of both sexes are put
through schools where they acquire knowledge of white
men’s ways and then they are returned to the company
of elders who have not similarly progressed. The
theory of the system was that the younger generation
would reclaim the older. Too often the matter did
not work out that way in practice. The result was as
apt to be division where there ought to be unity, con­
cluding in the relapse of the young to the manners of
their ancestors.
The better method now in prospect holds promise of
a uniform raising of the general level of economic ef­
ficiency. This, we take it, is the larger purpose of
the Indian schools. The Indian has been forced to live
under conditions which he did not choose for himself,
and the process of adaptation is first of all practical.
Refinements of academic culture have their place, but
their relative importance may have been over-estimat­
ed. What our Indians need to know first of all is how
to make a living in the world as it is. It is not even
necessary that they should submerge the sense of race
consciousness. They possess elements of culture and
a good many cherishable traditions which can with prof-
fit be retained and cultivated as useful instruments in
the development of charactar.— E ditorial in 7he Or­
egonian.
Supt. Lipps assures us that if the “Dr.” before his name in
the above article refers in any way to the medical profession
that he believes he can qualify, as he once “cured a ham.”
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