The Indian To-day

CHAPTER VIII

THE INDIAN IN COLLEGE AND THE PROFESSIONS

It is the impression of many people who are not well informed on the Indian situation that book education is of little value to the race, particularly what is known as the higher education. The contrary is true. What we need is not less education, but more; more trained leaders to uphold the standards of civilization before both races. Among Indian college and university graduates a failure is very rare; I am sure I have not met one, and really do not know of one.

The press is responsible for many popular errors. Whenever an Indian indulges in any notorious misbehavior, he is widely heralded as a "Carlisle graduate," although as a matter of fact he may never have attended that famous school, or have been there for a short time only. Obviously the statement is intended to discredit the educated Indian. But Carlisle is not a college or university, although, because of the wonderful athletic prowess of its students, they have met and defeated the athletes of many a white university on the football field. Its curriculum is considerably below that of the ordinary high school; it is a practical or vocational school, giving a fair knowledge of some trade together with the essentials of an English education, but no Latin or other foreign language. Consequently its graduates must attend a higher preparatory school for several years before they can enter college.

It will be seen, then, that the college-educated men and women of my race have accomplished quite a feat, considering their antecedents and wholly foreign point of view. They have had to adjust themselves to a new way of thinking, as well as a new language, before they could master such abstract ideas and problems as are presented by mathematics and the sciences. Their own schools graduate them at a mature age and do not prepare them for college. Furthermore, they are almost always hampered by lack of means. Nevertheless, an increasing number have succeeded in the undertaking.

I wish to contradict the popular misconception that an educated Indian will necessarily meet with strong prejudice among his own people, or will be educated out of sympathy with them. From their point of view, a particularly able or well-equipped man of their race is a public blessing, and all but public property. That was the old rule among us. Up to a very recent period an educated Indian could not succeed materially; he could not better himself, because the people required him to give unlimited free service, according to the old régime. I have even known one to be killed by the continual demands upon him.

There was a time (not so long ago, either) when the educated Indian stood in a very uncomfortable position between his people and the Government officials and shady politicians. Every complaint was brought to him, as a matter of course; and he was expected to expose and redress every wrong. As I have said elsewhere, such efforts are generally useless, and resulted only in damage to his financial position and his reputation. No doubt he often invited attacks upon himself by a rashness born of his ardent sympathy for his fellow-tribesmen. In this matter I speak from personal experience as well as long observation.

Even in the old, wild days, an education was appreciated by the Indians; but it was a hard life for the educated man. They made him carry too heavy a burden, without much recompense save honor and respect. But we have pretty well passed through that period, and the native graduates of our higher institutions have begun to show their strength and enlarge their views. They have not only done well for themselves and their race, but they stand before the world as living illustrations of its capacity, disproving many theories concerning untutored races.

It was declared without qualification by the Universal Races Congress at London in 1911 that there is no inherently superior race, therefore no inferior race. From every race some individuals have mastered the same curriculum and passed the same tests, and in some instances members of so-called "uncivilized" races have stood higher than the average "civilized" student; therefore they have the same inherent ability. Certain peoples have remained undeveloped because of their religion, philosophy, and form of government; in other words, because of the racial environment. Change the environment, and the race is transformed. Certainly the American Indian has clearly demonstrated the truth of this assertion.

The very mention of the name "Indian" in earlier days would make the average white man's blood creep with thoughts of the war-whoop and the scalping-knife. A little later it suggested chiefly feathers and paint and "Buffalo Bill's Wild West." To-day the association is rather with the Carlisle school and its famous athletes; but to the thinking mind the name suggests deeper thoughts and higher possibilities.

It was no less a man than Theodore Roosevelt who said to me once in the White House that he would give anything to have a drop of Sioux or Cheyenne blood in his veins. It is a fact that the intelligent and educated Indian has no social prejudice to contend with. His color is not counted against him. He is received cordially and upon equal terms in school, college, and society.

Dr. Booker Washington is in the habit of saying jocosely that the negro blood is the strongest in the world, for one drop of it makes a "nigger" of a white man. I would argue that the Indian blood is even stronger, for a half-blood negro and Indian may pass for an Indian, and so be admitted to first-class hotels and even to high society. All that an Indian needs in order to be popular, and indeed to be lionized if he so desires, is to get an education and hold up his head as a member of the oldest American aristocracy. Many of our leading men have married into excellent families and are prominent in cultivated white communities. We want the best in two races and civilizations in exchange for what we have lost.

Some of us have entered upon every known professional career, such as medicine, law, the ministry, education and the sciences, politics and higher business management, art and literature. It may be well to mention some of our best-known professional men and women. The doctors seem to have been the first to enter the general field in competition with their white colleagues: at first, to be sure, as "Indian herb doctors," or quacks of one sort or another, but later as competent graduated physicians. The Government has utilized several in the Indian service, and others have established themselves in private practice.

Perhaps the foremost of these is Dr. Carlos Montezuma of Chicago, a full-blooded Apache, who was purchased for a few steers while in captivity to the Pimas, who were enemies of his people. He was brought to Chicago by the man who ransomed him, a reporter and photographer, and when his benefactor died, the boy became the protégé of the Chicago Press Club. A large portrait of him adorns the parlor of the club, showing him as the naked Indian captive of about four years old.

He went to the public school, then to Champaign University, Illinois, and from there to the Northwestern University, where he was graduated from the medical department. All this time, although receiving some aid from various sources, he largely supported himself. After graduation Dr. Montezuma was sent by the Government as physician to an Indian agency in Montana, and later transferred to the Carlisle school. In a few years he returned to Chicago and opened an office. He has been a prominent physician there for a number of years, and was recently married to a lady of German descent. He stands uncompromisingly for the total abolition of the reservation system and of the Indian Bureau, holding that the red man must be allowed to work out his own salvation.

One of the earliest practitioners of our race was Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte of the Omaha tribe. Having prepared at Hampton Institute and elsewhere, she entered the Philadelphia Medical College for Women. When she had finished, she returned to her tribe, and was for some time in the Government service. She has since taken up private practice and also had charge of a mission hospital. Dr. Picotte is a sister of Bright Eyes (Susette La Flesche) and also of Francis La Flesche of Washington, D. C. There is another Indian doctor, not of full blood, who is president of the City Club of Chicago and active in civic reform. In several Middle Western cities there are successful doctors and dentists of my race.

In the profession of law we have none of full blood whose fame is national. Judge Hiram Chase of the Omahas and others have won local distinction. The Hon. Charles Curtis, Senator from Kansas, was a successful lawyer in Topeka when he was elected to the House of Representatives, and later to the United States Senate. His mother is a Kaw Indian. Mr. Curtis was and is a leader of the Republican party in his state. Senator Owen of Oklahoma is part Cherokee. The whole country has come to realize his ability and influence. Representative Carter of Oklahoma is also an Indian.

During my student days in New Hampshire I was often told that Daniel Webster was part Indian on his mother's side. Certainly his physiognomy as well as his unequalled logic corroborated the story. We all know that governors and other men of mark have proclaimed themselves descendants of Pocahontas; I have met several in the West and South. I know that the late Senators Quay of Pennsylvania and Morgan of Alabama had some Indian blood, for they themselves told me so; and I have been told the same of Senators Clapp and La Follette, but have never verified it. Their wonderful aggressiveness and dauntless public service in my mind point to native descent, and if they can truthfully claim it I feel sure that they will be proud to do so. They must know that many distinguished army officers as well as traders and explorers left sons and daughters among the American tribes, especially during the first half of the nineteenth century. As late as 1876 Dr. Washington Mathews, a surgeon in the United States Army, brought down on a Missouri River steamboat a Gros Ventre son, and left him with the missionary teacher, Dr. Alfred L. Riggs, to rear and educate. This military surgeon and scientist not only attained the rank of major-general, but he became one of our foremost archæologists. The boy was called Berthold, from the place of his birth. He was afterward sent to Yankton College, but I do not know what became of him. As for those brilliant men, so many in number, who have the blood of both races in their veins, I will not pretend to claim for the Indian all the credit of their talents and energy.

In the ministry we have many able and devoted men – more than in any other profession. The Presbyterian Church alone has thirty-eight and the Episcopal Church about twenty, with a less number in several other denominations, and two Roman Catholic priests. Most of these labor among their own people, though the Rev. Frank Wright, a Choctaw, is well known as an evangelistic preacher and singer.

One of our best-known clergymen is Rev. Sherman Coolidge, a full-blood Arapahoe. He has had an unusual career, having been taken prisoner as a boy by an officer of the army. He was sent to school and eventually graduated from Bishop Whipple's Seabury Divinity School at Faribault, Minn. Since that time Doctor Coolidge has devoted himself to the Christianization of his race. He is the president of our recently organized Society of American Indians.

Bishop Whipple developed many able preachers, of whom perhaps the most accomplished was the Rev. Charles Smith Cook, of the Yankton Sioux. He was the son of a Sioux woman and a military officer. Mr. Cook was graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, and later from Seabury Divinity School. He had unusual eloquence and personal charm, and became at once one of Bishop Hare's ablest helpers in his great work among the Sioux. Stationed at Pine Ridge at the time of the Wounded Knee massacre, he opened his church to the wounded Indian prisoners as an emergency hospital. His much regretted death occurred a few months later. He was a tireless worker and much loved by his people.

One of our promising young ministers is the Rev. Henry Roe Cloud, a Winnebago, graduated from Yale and Oberlin. Stephen Jones, a Sioux, who was graduated from the Y. M. C. A. training-school at Springfield, Mass., has done good work as field secretary among the Indians for a number of years. I should add that there are many ministers of my race who have no college degree nor much education in the English language, yet who are among our most able and influential leaders. My own brother, Rev. John Eastman, who passed but a short time in school, has not only been a successful preacher among the Sioux but for many years their trusted adviser and representative to look after their interests at the national capital.

A few men and many women have succeeded in the teaching profession, most of them in the United States Indian Service. It is the express policy of the Government to use the educated Indians, whenever possible, in promoting the advancement of their race; indeed some of the treaties include this stipulation. Therefore preference is given them by the Indian Bureau, and although they must pass a civil-service examination to prove their fitness, such examination, in their case, is non-competitive. They have been prepared in the larger Government schools, in many instances with the addition of normal and college courses. At least two are superintendents of schools. A number of young women, Carlisle graduates, have taken up trained nursing as a profession, and are practising successfully both among whites and Indians.

In the sciences, especially in ethnology and archæology, we have several who have rendered material service. William Jones, a Sac and Fox quarter blood, was a graduate of Hampton and of Harvard University. He took post-graduate work at Columbia, and was a pupil of those distinguished scientists, Dr. Putnam and Dr. Boas. The latter has called him one of our ablest archæologists. Dr. Jones travelled among the various tribes, even to the coast of Labrador, and labored assiduously in the cause of science for Harvard and the Marshall Field Museum of Chicago, as well as other institutions. It was the Chicago Museum which sent him to the Philippine Islands, where he was murdered by the natives a few years ago.

We have also such men as Professor Hewitt of the Smithsonian Institution, Francis La Flesche of the same, and Arthur C. Parker of Albany, N. Y., who is state archæologist.

In literature several writers of Indian blood have appeared during the past few years, and have won a measure of recognition. Francis La Flesche, an Omaha, has collaborated with Miss Alice C. Fetcher in ethnological work, and is also the author of a pleasing story of life in an Indian school called "The Middle Five." Zitkalasa, a Sioux (now Mrs. Bonney), attended a Western college, where she distinguished herself in an intercollegiate oratorical contest. Soon afterward she appeared in the Atlantic Monthly as the writer of several papers of an autobiographical nature, which attracted favorable attention, and were followed by a little volume of Indian legends and several short stories. Mrs. Bonney has more recently written the book of an Indian opera called "The Sun Dance," which has been produced in Salt Lake City by university students. John Oskinson, a Cherokee, was first heard of as the winner in an intercollegiate literary contest, and he is now on the staff of Collier's Weekly. The Five Civilized Nations of Oklahoma can show many other writers and journalists.