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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 26, 1930)
CHEMAWA AMERICAN Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education HMiiiimwuwMmiimuniiMituHimuiitminiiinnmiituwiiwmiiiuiiiiiiiiUHuiiiiuuiumiiiiuumiuimuuiiiHiim Vol. XXXI Wednesday, Feb. 26, 1930 No. 24 OUR INDIAN PROBLEM OUR OWN LOWLY ORIGIN By O. H. L ipps It might help us more clearly to visualize the problem and cause us to have more patience with the Indian if we would indulge in a brief contempla tion of the evolution and development of our own race. If we turn back the hands of time two thousand years, we will arrive at a period in history when the progenitors of the most civilized and enlightened por tion of mankind today, were benighted savages, liv ing in wigwams orin dug-outs roofed with cow-dung. Change a few race and geographic names in the “Germania” of Tacitus and his descriptions of the life, manners and customs of the Teutonic peoples of Northwestern Europe might easily be applied to the North American Indians at the time Columbus landed on the shores of the Western Hemisphere. While the former fashioned their clothing from the hairy skins of wild animals, the latter dressed the skins and decorated their garments with designs in colors and with brilliant plumage and lustrous furs. The one possessed only a rude skill without art; the other added to his skill both art and poetic fancy. Both races were divided into tribes with chiefs and head men; both worshipped the sun and other objects of nature, and paid obeisance to their respective gods of war, the chase, and to the goddess of fruitfulness— our own Eostre or Easter. When we read that Julius Caesar found the inhabit ants of Gaul and the thirty tribes of Britain all naked barbarians, and the Angles, Jutes and Saxons roaming savages, we should remember that these people were our ancestors and the progenitors of the most progres sive, virile, liberty-loving nations of the earth. Four hundred years of intermittant contact with the great Roman civilization bad not served to mollify the fierce spirit of those bold Nordic men when, headed by their war chiefs, Hengest and Horsa, they landed on the shores of Britian to found the Anglo-Saxon race. While our ancestors offered up human sacrifices the Indian’s religious offerings were of a less gruesome nature. If the Indian made war on his enemies, the founders of the race to which we delight to trace our origin added to the crime of war that of sea-robber and pirate. If the Indian’s heaven was limited to a (Continued on page 3) SUPT. CHEMAWA INDIAN SCHOOL The more we study the Indian as he was before he became subject to our laws and conventions, the more we are impressed with the strong family likeness between most of his traits and those of our own remote ancestors. The manifest infer ence is that what we call the Indian problem is a human rather than a race question, and that its solution must be sought on common-sense rather than theoretical lines—in other words, by following the course of nature instead of concocting arti ficial devces to meet the demands of every special situation. —F rancis E. L eupp , Former Commissioner of Indian Affairs. In his book entitled, “Applied Sociology,” Profes sor Lester F. Ward describes at some length the factors that contribute largely to the progress and advancement of society from the primitive to the civ ilized state. Among these factors he regards “the diffusion of knowledge’ ’ as the chief means of removing prejudice and superstition from the minds of what Virgil was wont to call “the ignoble herd”—the masses of mankind who live below the scale maintained by the more fortunate, educated class. From the view point of the federal Government, we might regard the Indian asa section of the “submerged tenth” of our population entitled to our special consideration. What he needs is enlightenment. He needs to have his mind opened to a better way of living under our highly organized social system. We must somehow get over to this Red Brother of ours the simple truths and methods upon which our progressive civilization is built, and we must devise some means of teaching him how to better his condition through the develop ment and right application of his own mental and physical powers. It is not enough that we confine our educational activities to the child. We must in some manner find a way to reach the adult. We cannot hope to accomplish worth-while results by trying to plead and argue with an ignorant mind. Before we can convince the Indian he must be able to under stand us, and before he can understand us he must not only know our language, but he must experience the truths we are trying to convey to him. In this way only will he assimilate and be able to apply in his own life the knowledge of a better, healthier and more efficient mode of living. And to this end there is need of a broad educational policy which will rec ognize the fact that the Indian problem, while pri marily one of education, is a problem of sociology rather than one of pedagogy.
