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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 5, 1909)
r 1 ( i 1 ft;&1ftsY,ftsiia. V 'PORTLAND,5 OREGON,; SUNDAY .MORNING DECEMBER ,5, 1909 iff V. ' SivW 'irrTr".-----i.v-- :. . . .v! . . i ,f fs,- I Vii f r ; , . (."., ' - 1 , : I -.. . k .......... ; 1 I F ' .! 1 f " ' . A u I y.W : . ' V'"','. i - .;lki tevrv; ' . -yj i 'S riff J'. it ' TV o i. . t , -s J?y J ) I ' jr., i ST , ' , : " - ' :? h 'U (J, kS , r ' sfS :k fJ , X ''?v, ' - .hy the Race That Faced Extinction is . Now on the Increase icy: that of making the Indian a part of the body politic Education, the great uplifter, is prov ing once more its power. More than 30,000 Indian boys and girls are attending gov- NCE more the Indian ts on the up. (QSt of $,300)000. Besides thUf the ? - adults in the great reservations have been .. . rAtfTtf xr now 40,000 more of taught how to support themselves, how to him-than there were twenty years ago. live in peace and comfort on some of the - . The. ravages of firewater and disease, most productive lands that human beings the ' devastating wars, the starvation of could have the good fortune to occupy. Idng, Hard Winters these and kindred The graft and oppression- that, once other causes- that decimated the ranks of . ' marked the conduct of Indian affairs are no the red' men have been terminated. more. The rich picking that made an In- " In other words, the white man is re- dian tost worth while has gone with the pairing the damage he did. The centuries buffalo. of aggression; of oppression? of land-grab- , That is the whole story. Nothing bing, of greediness , and ingratitude, have more is needed to explain why the red man ghen way to a sane and broad-minded poU is coming into his own again. EYES to tadenU aaJ sociologist there i Jtmad mi. they of the kirned ilk are com- glamour about the Indian- Aknoat pleiely at aa aa to tha origin of the Indian, with the, ardor of acfcoolbojr da they Some hare it that be ia an ofahoot of those - - -tpeculate on who he i and where he; adrentuxoua Chineae who writ rowinjf around eante from. Ahout him ia that halo of mytry . the tea long before the Viidni or the pan hich atrtehca W the ancient, the anliqoe, the iara came on earth. Chhora think that he ia unknowable. rn2y an hoot of Is scarcely an ancient race which has wholly tscaped, responsibility as the progenitor of him. Yet, however all that may be, the white m,an found the red man roving all over the American continent looking for a Mesaiah, as the white man had done over a thousand years before. Like many other thinjra resrardinflr the In dian, his numbers ' at that time can never be known. Some 250 years ago the aboriginal census. takers estimated that in the territory bounded by the Great Lakes on the east and the Platte, Alissouri " and Mississippi rivers on the west and. south there were 500,000 souls. This is 480,000 square miles of territory, which now sup ports more than 12,000,000 whites. Of the In dians, scarcely 50;0O0 are left. WHAT THE WHITE MAN DID This is a fair sample of what the white man did for the Indian all over the continent. Our mixed ancestry had the fighting habit, and had it bad particularly the French and English. They were not content with scrapping with each other. They dragged the redskins into it whenever they could, and the redskins, born to war, were nothing loth. When there were no wars the traders and land-grabbers got busy. The fiery braves took to spirits like ducks to water. They aold their fur, their land, their very souls for it. Gradually the eastern settlers drove the red men toward the west. Then from the north and the south the whites closed in. Still westward went the red men, till, with the rash of the forty-niners to California and, the acquisition of Tezaa and New Mexico, they were altogether hemmed in by ci vibration. . Once great tribes, which were old when the Tiomans were young, which had their religions before tna time ox Christ, were reduced to shreda and tatters. Driven here and there, the of their etuvsJry cat off by war and ory of their former greatness. At last, with the Sitting Bull uprising, there came an awakening to the civilized con querors. These pitiful remnants of the once great red men had no place in the new order of things. The buffalo gone and other game grow ing almost daily scarcer, they were dependent upon supplies doled out by the government. Their tribal organizations weakened, their morals perverted, their bodies shattered by whisky, they were little better than paupers. Just two decades ago this was. Yet, in twenty years, there has come a complete change. The scattered bands which dot the West from the Canadian to the Mexican borders have been taught to take care of themselves. They can now till the soil, and they are becoming as healthy and prosperous as 'the other farmers. Their children are learning .the ways of the white man, and are no'inapt scholars. So it is that the red man is being nursed back to life. It is about time, for the few hun dred thousand tha,t 'are left , of him are scat tered among somewhere near sixty reservations. Only one settlement 'of any considerable num bers remains. That is the Navajo agency in Arizona, which has about 25,000 inhabitants. " Other large agencies, with their inhabitants in round numbers, are: La Pointe, in Wisconsin, with 5000 Chippewas; Mackinac, in Michigan, with 8000 Chippewas, Ottawas and others; Pine "Ridge, South Dakota, 7000 -Sioux and Chey ennes; Rosebud, South Dakota, 5000 Sioux; , White Earth, Minnesota, 8000 Chippewas; Pima, Arizona, 8000 Pimas ; Pueblo and Jicarillo, New Mexico, Pueblos and Apaches, 11,000. AH the other agencies comprise bands of from 500 to 3000, representing merely the rem nants of once powerful tribes. Perhaps this breaking the Indian up into small bands has helped in a measure to combat a foe that, aided by whisky, has been making great inroads into his ranks the white plague. HIS WORST ENEMY For this, too, the redskin is indebted to the white man. In the last report of the Depart ment of Commerce and Labor on mortality ata tistics, issued recently, it is declared that the mortality of the Indians from tuberculosis is "undoubtedly far higher than that of either the whites or the negroes, although it is believed by careful investigators that the disease was en tirely absent before the advent of the white race 1 ia America." Because of this very fact and the consequent lack of the immunity, conferred ty previous struggles of the race with the disease, tuhercu- in ytt, ia aa fe when so taurh u being, .who were .driven out of Iiraet Indeed, tier whisky, they, retained little act than xnem- -losi is peculiarly-fatal in it efecta epoo tls Indian race. ' It is , aided,, '..moreover, . by ; tie changed conditions incident to. civilized life and by ignorance arid 'disregard , of the possibilities of infection. . . 1 - , - ' In 1907, according' to' the summary made by the Office of Indian Affairs,' there were 298,472 .Indians in , the United ' States, exclusive of Alaska. Of theso the 'population of he five civilized tribes, . including freedmen and inter married whites, amounted to 101,228,.and' the remainder to 197,244.. The proportion of the Indians found in- the states where the 'votinjf population is registered in congressional dis Jricts was ' comparatively small, the aggregate ndian population of the registration states; as ' constituted in 1907, being 52,220, or 1.T per; 1000 of the total population as reported at the census' of 1900. At present the only areas for; which distinctive rates for Indians can" be given are three Indian reservations in South Dakota For ' these reservations the following table shows the mortality from tuberculosis of the lungs and other forms of tuberculosis for the years 1904 ' and. 1907: Number of deaths pr 100 800 popntatfoiv Tuberculosis OUisr forms e Area Resarratlon. of lunm. tuberoitloslSL 10. 1907. 10. 1Z. Chercnns River ..... 65 1 474.S 111.7' , Pljie'RId. .......... mt 4 .4 tS.t Hit Rosebud 234 1.015 The exceedingly high death rates for thee ' areas, except that for the Rosebud Reservation ' in 1906, clearly show the great prevalence and : . mortality of tuberculosis among the Indians. The rates are based, however, upon compara tively small populations, and the irregularity of the distribution of these pulmonary and other forms of the disease would auggest that the ? figures cannot be applied to all sections, but merely show how common is the disease among the redskin a. . The returns of death were b- ' tained directly from the physicians at the Ia dian agencies. y At the Iat International Congress on Tu berrulois, held at Washington, an exhibit was made of the mortality from tuberculosis among . the Indians for the year ending June 0, 190;, by Dr. Ales Ilrdlicka, assistant curator of th Smithsonian Institute, on the basis cf uperiii reports obtained from United States loJia3 agents and superintendent by Francis E. Leujp, commissioner of Indian a fairs. , Dr. Ilrdlicka's figures bow! sn strrtj-t toortalir of per 100.0fX3 cf tSe In hxi popnlation. "How lirpe thi is rcsy ly iiVJ from the fact that i averar r.. rt ' y ir the whiU-a in reciitrati.Tn Utfji fr "3 vL.s c a ease was bat 173 rr J X'JM', U t t-t,-? for the noffToes was or ttt l.'.tio L.c.t than half titt of ibm IJian. tOO.vnXVXD Off "'ilL'E t'ZZJ . ,