Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

“Relief had been so long delayed,” says the same officer in the
same report, “that supplies failed to reach the agencies until
the Indians were in almost a starving condition, and until the
apparent intention of the government to abandon them to
starvation had induced large numbers to join the hostile bands
under Sitting Bull.”

Two other instances of the same kind are mentioned; and a third is recorded, in which, owing to the failure of Congress to provide money promised by a treaty, “hundreds of Pawnees had been compelled to abandon their agency, to live by begging and stealing in southern Kansas.” “In numerous other instances,” adds the commissioner pathetically, “the funds at the disposal of this office have been so limited as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to keep the Indians from starving”—and this, too, when the same Indians had large sums of money standing to their credit held “in trust” for them in the treasury of the United States. A long discussion advocating the removal of all the Indians to a few reservations—although this could not be done without violations of the most solemn treaties—is clinched with the cynical remark that “there is a very general and growing opinion that observance of the strict letter of treaties with Indians is in many cases at variance both with their own best interests and with sound public policy.”

And these words are from the official report of the chief of a great bureau in the most important department of our government! Did we know what we were about when we made these treaties? If “no,” we were fools; if “yes,” then we are knaves now to violate them without the consent of the other, the helpless party. “The Indians claim,” says the commissioner, “that they hold their lands by sanctions so solemn that it would be a gross breach of faith on the part of the government to take away any portion of it without their consent, and that consent they propose to withhold.” Still, let us do it, cries the commissioner; “public necessity must ultimately become supreme law.” “Public necessity”—which in this case means private rapacity—“public necessity,” and not truth, good faith, and justice, must rule. Many tribes are living peaceably and doing well, on lands solemnly promised to them for ever, in various parts of the West; the civilized and semi-civilized tribes in the Indian Territory are living peaceably and doing well on lands solemnly promised to them for their own exclusive use for ever, and in some cases bought with their own money. But it would be more convenient for us to have them all together; so let us tear up the treaties, and drive all the Indians into the one territory.

From the same report we take this paragraph, which is only one of very many like it:

“The Alsea agency, in Oregon, has been abolished, but inadequate
appropriations have worked hardship and injustice to the
Indians. They are required to leave their homes and cultivated
fields” (for no other reason than that white men covet them)
“and remove to Siletz, but no means are furnished to defray
expense of such removal or to assist in their establishment in
their new home.”

The Board of Indian Commissioners, in their third annual report (1871), in view of the continued violation of treaties by the government in compelling tribes to remove from the reservations assigned to them, found themselves constrained to say:

“The removal of partially civilized tribes already making fair
progress and attached to their homes on existing reservations is
earnestly deprecated. Where such reservations are thought to be
unreasonably large, their owners will themselves see the
propriety of selling off the surplus for educational purposes.
The government meanwhile owes them the protection of their
rights to which it is solemnly pledged by treaty, and which it
cannot fail to give without dishonor.”

But it _has_ failed to give this protection in numberless instances, and it seems to rest very easily under the stigma of dishonor thus incurred—as, for instance, in the case of the Osages, of whom their agent, in a report dated Oct. 1, 1870, thus speaks:

“This tribe of Indians are richly endowed by nature, physically
and morally. A finer-looking body of men, with more grace and
dignity, or better intellectual development, could hardly be
found on this globe. They were once the most numerous and
warlike nation on this continent, with a domain extending from
the Gulf to the Missouri River and from the Mississippi to the
Rocky Mountains; but they have been shorn of their territory
piece by piece, until at last they have not a settled and
undisputed claim to a single foot of earth. It is strictly true
that one great cause of their decline has been fidelity to their
pledges. More than sixty years ago they pledged themselves by
treaty to perpetuate peace with the white man. That promise has
been nobly kept—kept in spite of great and continual
provocation. White men have committed upon them almost every
form of outrage and wrong, unchecked by the government and
unpunished. Every aggressive movement of the whites tending to
the absorption of their territory has ultimately been
legalized.”

These Osages are nearly all Catholics, and the agent who thus writes of them is Mr. Isaac T. Gibson, a Quaker, or an “Orthodox Friend.” Would it be believed that three years afterwards the kind and sympathizing Friend Gibson was busily engaged in inflicting upon the people for whose wrongs he was so indignant an injury greater than any they had yet suffered? “Enterprising scoundrels” of whom he wrote in his report had robbed the Osages of everything save their faith; and good Friend Gibson tried to rob them of that. How he set about the task, and how he fared in it, will be told later.

If this be not enough, look at the picture of a model Indian reservation drawn by a lawyer of California, and addressed to J. V. Farwell, one of the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners. He is describing the Hoopa Valley reservation:

“I found the Indians thoughtful, docile, and apparently eager to
enter into any project for their good, if they could only
believe it would be carried out in good faith, but utterly
wanting in confidence in the agent, the government, or the white
man. Lethargy, starvation, and disease were leading them to the
grave. I found, in fact, that the reservation was a rehash of a
negro plantation; the agent an absolute dictator, restrained by
no law and no compact known to the Indians. During my stay the
superintendent visited the valley. He stayed but a few days. We
had drinking and feasting during this time, but no grave
attention to Indian affairs; no extended investigation of what
had been done or should be done. The _status quo_ was accepted
as the _ne plus ultra_ of Indian policy. He, too, appears to
think that annihilation is the consummation of Indian
management. If the reservation was a plantation, the Indians
were the most degraded of slaves. I found them poor, miserable,
vicious, degraded, dirty, naked, diseased, and ill-fed. They had
no motive to action. Man, woman, and child, without reference to
age, sex, or condition, received the same five pounds of flour
per week, and almost nothing more. They attended every Monday to
get this, making a day’s work of it for most of them. The oldest
men, or stout, middle-aged fathers of families, were spoken to
just as children or slaves. They know no law but the will of the
agent; no effort has been made to teach them any, and, where it
does not conflict with this dictation, they follow the old forms
of life—polygamy, buying and selling of women, and compounding
crime with money _ad libitum_. The tribal system, with all its
absurd domination and duty, is still retained. The Indian woman
has no charge of her own person or virtue, but her father,
brother, chief, or nearest male relative may sell her for a
moment or for life. I was impressed that really nothing had been
done by any agent, or even attempted, to wean these people from
savage life to civilization, but only to subject them to
plantation slavery.”

The official volumes from which we are taking our information contain the successive annual reports of the various Indian agents and superintendents, who are 88 in number, and the reports of many councils held between the Indians and the Board of Indian Commissioners, agents, army officers, and special commissioners. The Hon. Felix R. Brunot, chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, is the Mercurius in many of these councils. He does nearly all the talking on the side of the government, and before he talks he always prays. Thus: “Gen. Smith announced that Mr. Brunot would speak to the Great Spirit before the council began. Mr. Brunot offered a prayer.” In the interests of religion it is to be regretted that councils thus begun sometimes appeared to have been designed for the purpose of inflicting new wrongs upon the Indians. But we mention the councils here only for the purpose of taking from the reports of their proceedings, as well as from the annual reports of the agents, a very few of the remarks made by the Indian chiefs concerning themselves, the government, the agents, and the whites generally. The limits of our space compel us to string these together without further introduction:

RED CLOUD: God raised us Indians. I am trying to live peaceably.
All I ask for is my land—the little spot I have left. My people
have done nothing wrong. I have consulted the Great Spirit, and
he told me to keep my little spot of land. My friends, have pity
on me, if you would have me live long. My people have been
cheated so often they will not believe.

BUFFALO GOOD.: If you are going to do anything for us, do it
quick. I saw the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington,
and he told me he was going to fix it up, but I have heard that
so often I am afraid it is not true. I have been disappointed,
and I think Washington is not so much of a chief after all.
Because we do not fight, he takes away our lands and gives them
to the tribes who are fighting the whites all the time.

HOWLISH-WAMPO (“the Cayuse chief, a Catholic Indian, in dress,
personal appearance, and bearing superior to the average
American farmer”): When you told me you believed in God, I
thought that was good. But you came to ask us for our land. We
will not let you have it. This reservation is marked out for us.
We see it with our eyes and our hearts; we all hold it with our
bodies and our souls. Here are my father and mother, and
brothers and sisters and children, all buried; I am guarding
their graves. This small piece of land we all look upon as our
mother, as if she were raising us. On the outside of the
reservation I see your houses; they have windows, they are good.
Why do you wish my land? My friend, you must not talk too strong
about getting my land; I will not let it go.

HOMLI (chief of the Walla-Wallas): My cattle and stock are
running on this reservation, and they need it all. It is not the
white man who has helped me: I have made all the improvements on
my own land myself.

WENAP-SNOOT (chief of the Umatillas): When my father and mother
died, they gave me rules and gave me their land to live on. They
left me to take care of them after they were buried. I was to
watch over their graves. I will not part from them. I cultivate
my land and I love it.

PIERRE (a young chief): I do not wish money for my land; I am
here, and I will stay here. I will not part with lands, and if
you come again I will say the same thing.

WAL-CHE-TE-MA-NE (another Catholic chief, as, indeed, were the
three last named): You white chiefs listen to me: you, Father
Vermeerch, are the one who rules my heart. I am old now, and I
want to die where my father and mother and children have died. I
see the church there; I am glad to see it; I will stay beside it
and die by the teachings of the father. I love my church, my
mills, my farm, the graves of my parents and children. I do not
wish to leave them. (Happily, the firmness of these Catholic
Indians, the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla-Walla tribes, carried
the day, and they were permitted to remain on their little
reservation).

TENALE TEMANE (another Catholic Indian): We cannot cheat our own
bodies and our own souls. If we deceive ourselves we shall be
miserable; _only from the truth can we grow ourselves, and make
our children grow_. Of all that was promised to me by Gov.
Stevens I have seen nothing; _it must have been lost_.

THE YOUNG CHIEF: What you promised was not done; it was as if
you had taken the treaty as soon as it was made, and torn it up.
The treaties made with the Indians on all the reservations have
never been kept; _they have all been broken_. I do not want to
teach you anything about God; you are wise and know all about
him. (The irony of this is exquisite.)

TASENICK (a Wascoe chief): The people who are put over me teach
me worse things than I knew before. You can see what we were
promised by the treaty: we have never got anything; all we have
we bought with our own money. Our Great Father may have sent the
things promised, but they never got here.

CHINOOK: When we made the treaty they promised us schoolmasters
and a great many other things, but they forget them. We never
had any of them. They told us we were to have $8,000 a year; we
never saw a cent of it.

MACK (a Deschutes chief): It is not right to starve us; it is
better to kill us.

JANCUST: I cannot look you in the face; I am ashamed: white men
have carried away our women. What do you think? White men do
these things and say it is right.

NAPOLEON (a Catholic chief of the Tulalip reservation, who “came
forward with much dignity and laid before Mr. Brunot a bunch of
split sticks”): These represent the number of my people killed
by the whites during the year, and yet nothing has been done to
punish them. The whites now scare all the Indians, and we look
now wondering when all the Indians will be killed.

JOHNNY ENGLISH: We like Father Chirouse very well, because he
tries to do what is right; when he begins to work he does one
thing at a time.

HENRY (a Catholic on the Lumni reservation): I have been a
Christian for many years. We have some children at school with
Father Chirouse; we want our lands for them to live on when we
are dead.

DAVID CROCKETT (a Catholic chief): I ought to have a better
house in which to receive my friends. But we want most an altar
built in our church and a belfry on it; this work we cannot do
ourselves.

SPAR (a young chief): All the agents think of is to steal; that
is all every agent has done. When they get the money, where does
it go to? When I ask about it they say they will punish me. I
thought the President did not send them for that.

PETER CONNOYER (of the Grande Rondes): About religion—I am a
Catholic; so are all of my family. All the children are
Catholics. We want the sisters to come and teach the girls. The
priest lives here; he does not get any pay. He teaches us to
pray night and morning. We must teach the little girls. I am
getting old. I may go to a race and bet a little, but I don’t
want my children to learn it; it is bad.

TOM CURL: We want to get good blankets, not paper blankets. I
don’t know what our boots are made of; if we hit anything they
break in pieces.

When, in 1870, President Grant announced the inauguration of his new Indian policy, the sects saw in it an opportunity of carrying on their propaganda among the Indians with little or no cost to themselves, and of interfering with, and probably compelling the total cessation of, the work of the Catholic Church among many of the tribes. To begin with, here were 72 places in which they could install the same number of their ministers, or laymen devoted to their interests, with salaries paid by the general government. Once installed as Indian agents, these men would have autocratic power over the affairs of the tribes entrusted to them; and they could make life so uncomfortable for the Catholic missionaries already at work there that they would probably retire. If they disregarded petty persecutions, the agent could compel them to depart, since it is held by the Indian Bureau that an agent has power to exclude from a reservation any white man whose presence he chooses to consider as inconvenient, as well as to prevent the Indians from leaving the reservation for any purpose whatever. There were, it was known, many Indian agencies at which the Catholic Church had had missions for many years, and where all, or nearly all, the Indians were Catholics. If these agencies could be assigned to the care of the sects, how easily could the work of converting the Indian Catholics into Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, or Unitarians be accomplished! The priests could be driven away and forbidden to return; the sectarian preachers would have full play; and the Indian appetite for Protestant truth could be sharpened by judicious bribery and intimidation. On the borders of the reservation there might be—as there are—Catholic churches and Catholic priests; but the Catholic Indians on the reservation might be—as they have been—forbidden to cross the line in order to visit their priests and to receive the sacraments.

The new Indian policy which furnished this opportunity was probably not original with President Grant, and we are not disposed to call in question the purity and kindness of his motives in adopting it. At the time of its inauguration, however, he was surrounded by influences decidedly hostile to the Catholic Church; and it is probable that from the beginning the men “behind the throne” had a clear conception of the manner in which the new policy could be worked for the benefit of the sects. It was based upon an idea plausible to non-Catholics, but which no Catholic can ever accept—the idea that one religion is as good as another, and that, for example, it does not make much difference whether a man believes that Jesus Christ is God, or that he was simply a tolerably good but rather weak and vain man. This idea has been carried out in practice-for even to the “Unitarians” have been given two Indian agencies: those of the Los Pinos and White River in Colorado, whose entire religious education for 1876, as reported by the agents, consisted in “a sort of Shaker service of singing and dancing held for two or three days.” The chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Mr. Brunot, appears to have been anxious to spread abroad the doctrine of indifferentism among the Catholic Indians. Whenever, in his numerous “councils,” he found himself in company with such Indians, he undertook to enlighten them after this fashion:

“A chief said yesterday: ‘I don’t know about religion, because
they tell so many different things.’ Religion is like the roads;
they all go one way; all to the one good place; so take any one
good road and keep in it, and it will bring you out right at
last.” ... “I heard an Indian say that the white man has two
religions. In one way it looks so; but if you will understand
you will see it is only one.” ... “It is not two kinds of
religion, but it is as two roads that both go the same way.”

We scarcely think it is within the province of the federal government to pay a gentleman for preaching this kind of doctrine to Catholic Indians. But what was the new Indian policy? It was explained by President Grant, in his message of December 5, 1870, in these words:

“Indian agents being civil officers, I determined to give all
the agencies to such religious denominations as had heretofore
established missionaries among the Indians, and perhaps to some
other denominations who would undertake the work on the same
terms—that is, as missionary work.”

There is an undesirable lack of exactness in these words—for, as they stand, they might be understood as promising the agency of a tribe to a sect which had established on its territory a missionary station years ago, and had subsequently abandoned it. This, however, was certainly not the intention of the President; if he intended to act in good faith in the matter, he proposed, doubtless, to assign the agencies to churches that had established _successful_ missions—missions actually existing, having churches, schools, and converts. It is impossible to believe that it was the intention of the executive to transfer tribes of Catholic Indians to Protestant sects, under the pretence that the sects, at some remote period, had made feeble and fruitless attempts to establish missions among them. This, however, has been the construction placed upon the President’s policy by the sects; and, strange to say, they have experienced no difficulty in persuading successive Commissioners of Indian Affairs to agree with them in this interpretation, and to carry it out in a manner productive of the most wanton cruelty and injustice.

There are seventy-two Indian agencies: three in Arizona, three in California, two in Colorado, fifteen in Dakota, eight in the Indian Territory, one in Iowa, two in Kansas, one in Michigan, three in Minnesota, four in Montana, five in Nebraska, five in New Mexico, one in New York, two in Nevada, six in Oregon, one in Utah, seven in Washington Territory, two in Wisconsin, and one in Wyoming. According to any fair construction of the new policy, no less than forty of these agencies should have been assigned to the Catholic Church. In all of them the church had had missions for many years; in many of them all of the Christian Indians, or the great majority of them, were Catholics; in some of them the Indians had been Catholics for centuries, and their civilization was wholly due to the instruction they had received from Catholic priests. The following is a list of these agencies, with their location and the number of Indians embraced in each:

Name of Agency. No. of
Location. Indians.

Yakima Washington 3,000

Fort Hall Idaho 1,500

Tulalip Washington 3,950

Puyallup Washington 577

Skokomish Washington 875

Chehalis Washington 600

Neah Bay Washington 604

Colville Washington 3,349

La Point Wisconsin 646

Pottawattomie Indian 1,336
Territory

Flatheads Montana 1,821

Blackfeet Montana 14,630

Papagoes Arizona 6,000

Round Valley California 1,112

North California ——
California

Mission Indians California 5,000

Pueblos New Mexico 7,879

Osages Indian 2,823
Territory

Cœur d’Alenes Idaho 700

Quapams Indian 235
Territory

Was, Peorias, Indian 217
etc. Territory

Hoopa Valley California 725

Pimas and Arizona 4,326
Mariscopas

Moquis Arizona 1,700

Warm Spring Oregon 626

Grande Ronde Oregon 924

Siletz Oregon 1,058

Umatilla Oregon 837

Alsea Oregon 343

Malheur Oregon 1,200

Nez-Percés Idaho 2,807

Navajoes New Mexico 9,114

Mescaleros New Mexico 1,895

Milk River Montana 10,625

Crows Montana 4,200

Green Bay Wisconsin 1,480

Chippewas Minnesota 1,322

Mackinac Michigan 10,260

Grand River Dakota 6,269

Devil’s Lake Dakota 1,020

———

Total 117,585

Within the jurisdiction of these agencies there are 52 Catholic churches, 18 Catholic day-schools, and 10 Catholic boarding industrial schools. The Catholic priests and teachers employed among the Indians during the year 1875 numbered 117; while for the same year the Protestant sects had only 64 missionaries employed in all the agencies under their control. Would it not have been supposed that a fair interpretation of the new policy of President Grant—nay, that the only fair interpretation of it—would have awarded these 40 agencies to the Catholic Church? The missions of the church, in 1870, were in almost uncontested possession of these fields of labor. Her priests had borne the labor and the heat of the day; asking and expecting no aid from the state, and receiving very little from any other source, they had given themselves to the work of Christianizing these Indians; and while the sects had from time to time made spasmodic and desultory attempts at Indian missions, our priests and their coadjutors, the sisters of the teaching orders, had remained steadfast in their self-denying and arduous labor. But the sects were now inspired with a new and sudden zeal for the salvation of the Indians. They were not content with the 32 agencies in which, although there were many Catholic Indians, the church had not been able to establish permanent missions. They set up claims to the agencies we have enumerated, and it was observed that the fervor with which these demands were pressed was in exact proportion to the richness of the reservation and its desirableness as a future home for a missionary with a large family and with a numerous corps of needy relations. So fierce was their onslaught, and so rapidly were their demands conceded by the then commissioner, that, almost before the authorities of the church had been informed of what was going on, no less than 32 of the 40 agencies which, by any fair interpretation of the President’s policy, should have been assigned to Catholic care, were divided among the sects. Fourteen of the agencies, with 54,253 Indians, fell to the Methodists, the sect then, and perhaps now, most in favor with the administration; five, with 21,321 Indians, went to the Presbyterians; the same number, with 5,311 Indians, were awarded to the Quakers; the Congregationalists received three, with 2,056 Indians; the Reformed Dutch Church were given two, with 6,026 Indians; the “American Missionary Association” (a Congregational society) obtained two, with 2,126 Indians; and the Protestant Episcopal Church was gratified with one agency, the Chippewas of Missouri, 1,322 in number, who had been Catholics all their lives. There remained eight of the agencies to which the Catholic Church possessed a claim, and these were left in her possession, not, however, without a threat that they also would be taken from her—a threat already carried into execution in one case, the Papagoes, a tribe of 6,000, residing in Arizona, having been kindly transferred to the care of a sect called the “Reformed Church.” The agent of this tribe, in his last report, says:

“There is no school at present taught among these Indians. The
intellectual and moral training of the young has been, for a
long time, in the hands of the Roman Catholics, and the school
hitherto kept by the sisters of the Order of St. Joseph.”

The school is now closed, it appears; and the “Reformed Church” seemingly does not intend to open another, as their agent remarks that “there is, perhaps, but little use to establish schools, or look for any considerable advance in education among them.”

The seven agencies still left to the care of the church are those of Tulalip and Colville, in Washington Territory; Grande Ronde and Umatilla, in Oregon; Flathead, in Montana; and Standing Rock (or Grand River) and Devil’s Lake, in Dakota. These agencies, according to the last report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, have a population of 12,819 Indians. No less than 7,034 of these wear “citizen’s dress”; they have 825 frame or log houses; they have six boarding-schools and three day-schools, taught by 19 teachers; 382 of the adults can read; they have 12 churches, and 7,510, or more than half the whole number, are “church members.” Nothing like this can be shown at any of the agencies under Protestant control, save the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory. The whole of the Indians on the Grande Ronde reservation—755 in number—are so far civilized that all of them wear citizen’s dress. They have 375 houses, and 690 of them are “church members.” Their agent speaks of them in glowing terms; last year, without receiving a penny of the sums due them by the government, they not only supported themselves in comfort, but were able “of their charity” to relieve the necessities of two neighboring tribes, the Salmon River and Nestucca Indians, who were starving to death “in consequence of the failure of the government to fulfil the promises made by the honorable Commissioner Simpson.” The parsimony of the government compelled them to dispense with the services of their regular physician; but, writes the agent, “we have been fortunate in securing the services of a sister, who has, in addition to her duties as a teacher, kindly dispensed medicines with the most gratifying success.” “The school,” he adds, “is in a very prosperous condition under the efficient management of Sister Mary, superior, and three assistants.”

The Indians on the Tulalip reservation, 3,250 in number, are equally well advanced; the whole of them wear citizen’s dress; they have 2 boarding-schools, with 6 teachers, and 2,260 of them are “church members.” We look in vain for statistics like these among the agencies under Protestant control; when there is anything like it, it is found in the reports from the tribes which have been civilized and Christianized by the Catholic Church and then stolen away by the sects.

In addition to the 33 agencies which belonged by right to the church, but were distributed among the sects, 30 others were portioned out among them, so that, according to the last report of the commissioner, while the church, entitled to 40 agencies, has but 7, the Quakers have 16; the Methodists 14; the Baptists 2; the Presbyterianscc 7; the Congregationalists 6; the “Reformed” 4; the Protestant Episcopalians 9; the Unitarians 2; the “Free-will Baptists” 1; the “United Presbyterians,” who seem to be disunited from the other Presbyterians, 1; and the “Christian Union,” which is not in union with any of the other sects, 1. If our space permitted, we should point out the miserable results after a seven years’ possession of these agencies. The four agencies under the care of the “Reformed” body, for example, embrace 14 tribes, numbering 17,049 souls. Among these are the Papagoes, 5,900 in number, already tolerably well-civilized by Catholic instruction, and all of whom wear citizen’s dress. With the exception of these, the “Reformers,” after seven years’ labor, have 50 Indians who wear citizen’s dress, 2 schools, 1 church building, and 4 church members! As they have not thought it worth while to send out any missionaries, one wonders what they do with their church building, but it is probably used as a store-house by the “Reformed” agent.

The Hicksite Quakers have 5 agencies in Nebraska, with 4,098 Indians. They have 392 “church members,” but 348 of these belong to a civilized tribe—the Santee Sioux, who are 793 strong. After seven years of labor the Quakers have got only 44 out of the other 3,300 Indians under their care to call themselves “church members.” In the Hoopa Valley reservation, given to the Methodists, there is a “school building,” but no school, no teacher, and no pupils; there is a “church building,” but no missionary and no “church members.” The poor mission Indians in California, the children of Catholic parents for many generations, also under the tender care of the Methodists, have neither houses, nor school, nor church, nor missionary. The 6,000 Indians on the Red Cloud agency in Dakota, under the charge of the Protestant Episcopalians, have a “school building,” but no teacher, no scholars, no church, no missionary, and no “church members.” The 3,992 Cheyennes and Arapahoes in the Indian Territory, in charge of the Quakers, have a school-house, but no church, no missionary, and no “church members,” and so with the rest.

In selecting a few typical illustrations of the injustice perpetrated by the assignment of tribes of Catholic Indians to non-Catholic sects, we are embarrassed by the richness and plenitude of our facts. We mention only two—the Chippewas of Lake Superior, and the Osages.

The agency of the Chippewas of Lake Superior became vacant early in 1873, and General Ewing, on the 19th of March of that year, addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, submitting “that, under the Indian policy of President Grant, this agency should be assigned to the Catholic Church.” He accompanied his letter with a brief of the facts on which he thus claimed the agency for the church. The Chippewas number 4,551, and 3,696 of them wear citizen’s dress; they have six schools and three churches. More than 200 years ago the Catholic fathers Dablon and Marquette established the mission of St. Mary among the Chippewas, and the church has ever since looked upon them as her children. The Catholic missions, first permanently established among them in 1668, continued in a flourishing manner until the year 1800; they were revived after a lapse of 30 years; and for the past 47 years they have been continuously attended by Catholic priests—one being assigned exclusively and continuously to the religious instruction, education, and care of the Indians. The Indians at their own expense have built three Catholic churches, at Bayfield, La Pointe, and Bad River. The successive reports of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs from 1868 to 1872 set forth these facts. Praise is given in 1868 to Father Chebal for the good result of his labors; the agent, writing in 1870, says: “The religious instruction has been almost entirely under Catholic missionaries; 99 out of 100 of them are Catholics, and Father Chebal has labored industriously and successfully among them.” The agent, writing in 1871, again says: “Most of these people are members of the Roman Catholic Church. Their pastor has been a missionary among them for many years, and has labored with the zeal for which his church is proverbial to secure converts. He has accomplished much good.” The report of the agent for 1868 likewise mentions that the “Rev. L. H. Wheeler and his most estimable lady” had been conducting a Protestant mission there “under the control of the A. B. C. F. M. Society,” but that “_this society having almost withdrawn their support, and further for the purpose of educating their own children, Rev. Mr. Wheeler has abandoned his mission_.” The agent in 1869, Lt.-Col. Knight, of the army, thus writes:

“The Chippewas of Lake Superior generally have abandoned the
heathen faith of their fathers. If they have not all been made
intelligent Christians, they have abandoned heathenism. The
Catholic missionaries are the most assiduous workers among them,
and the largest portion of them have espoused that religious
faith; yet the Protestant religion has its adherents among them.
Father Chebal, of the Catholic faith, is untiring and devoted in
his labors with them. The Protestant religion is without a
missionary representative, which is unfortunate,” etc.

The case, it will be seen, was plain. The Catholic missions were shown to be the oldest and the _only successful_ missions among the Chippewas, and “the right of the Catholic Church, under the policy of the administration, to the agency” was incontestable. But the agency had already been given to the Congregationalists, who had never before attempted to establish a mission among the Chippewas, and whose minister knew nothing about the tribe. Pressed hard by General Ewing, the secretary referred the matter to our pious friend Mr. Brunot, who, in an elaborate and most disingenuous opinion, decided that, although the assignment of the agency to the Congregationalists might have been erroneous, now that it was made it ought not to be changed—and this, too, although the department had made similar changes in other instances, taking, for example, the Nez-Percés agency from the Catholics, to whom it had been assigned, and giving it to the Methodists in 1870. General Ewing, unwilling to submit to this palpable injustice, again addressed the Secretary of the Interior, reviewing the whole question and incontestably proving the justice of his claim. But all was in vain; the agency remains in the hands of the Congregationalists, and the Catholic Chippewas and their priests are at the mercy of men who have no sympathy or bond of common feeling with either.

The Osages, now in the Indian Territory, are and long have been almost wholly Catholic. But they were assigned to the Quakers, and good Friend Gibson, whose pathetic lament over the worldly sufferings of his _protegés_ we have already given, had not been long in charge of them ere he issued an edict forbidding Catholic priests or teachers to remain on the reservation. Accustomed to oppression and maltreatment of every kind, the Indians felt that this last blow was too hard to bear without remonstrance, and in June, 1873, they drew up and signed a memorial to the President, asking that “their former Catholic missionaries and school-teachers be restored to them and allowed to again locate in the Osage nation.” No response was given to this petition, and on the 31st of March in the next year a delegation of the tribe, with the governor of the nation at their head, arrived at Washington, and, without assistance or suggestions, drew up and presented to the Assistant Secretary of the Interior a memorial which it is impossible to read without emotion. After setting forth that the signers of the memorial are “the governor, chiefs, and councillors of the Great and Little Osage nation of Indians, and all duly-constituted delegates of said nations,” they recount the story of their former petition, and say:

“... In the name of our people, therefore, we beg leave to renew
our said petition, and to ask that our former Catholic
missionary, Father Shoemaker, and those connected with him in
his missionary and educational labors among our people previous
to the late war, be permitted to again locate among us. We think
that this request is reasonable and just. Catholic missionaries
have been among our people for several generations. Our people
are familiar with their religion. The great majority of them are
of the Catholic faith, and believe it is right. Our children
have grown up in this faith. Many of our people have been
educated by the Catholic missionaries, and our people are
indebted to them for all the blessings of Christianity and
civilization that they now enjoy, and have for them a grateful
remembrance. Since the missionaries have been taken away from
us, we have done but little good and have made poor advancement
in civilization and education. Our whole nation has grieved ever
since these missionaries have been taken away from us, and we
have prayed continuously that the Great Spirit might move upon
the heart of our great father, the President, and cause him to
return these missionaries to us. We trust he will do so, because
in 1865, when we signed the treaty of that date, the
commissioners who made it promised _that if we signed it we
should again have our missionaries_.”

The assistant secretary received the memorial, promising to present it to the President at once and to obtain for the delegation a reply: but on the next day Mr. Gibson, who had followed them to Washington in a state of great alarm, hurried them away from the capital to Philadelphia, and thence homewards, not permitting them to return. Immediately after their departure the petition they had filed in the department was missing, and its loss was only supplied by General Ewing, who had a printed copy with the certificate of the secretary placed on file. Simultaneously with the mysterious disappearance of this petition the Commissioner of Indian Affairs received a paper purporting to come from the Osages at home. We dislike to use the phrase, but the proof is clear that this document was a forgery. It purported to be signed by twenty-eight chiefs and braves, with their “mark”; but, as General Ewing says, “it was evidently got up by interested white men and the names of the Indians signed without their knowledge.” The substance of it was that the delegation which had gone to Washington was not to be regarded. Upon their return home the delegation met their people in council, and the result of this conference is related in a letter to General Ewing, signed by Joseph Paw-ne-no-posh, governor of the nation; Alexander Bezett, president of the council; T. L. Rogers, secretary; and the eighteen councillors. The letter is too long to be given here. In presenting it to the Secretary of the Interior, with a full account of the whole transaction, General Ewing used some very strong, but not too strong, language. “Their petitions,” said he, “have not been heard, and now, through me as the representative of the Catholic Indian missions, they make a final appeal. The petition of a defenceless people for simple justice at the hands of a great government is the strongest appeal that my head or heart can conceive; and it is of course unnecessary for me to urge it upon you. It is as plain and open as the day; and if you can decline (which I cannot believe) to comply with the repeated petitions of this people, it is useless for me to urge you to it. You must give this agency to the Catholic Church, or you publish the announcement that President Grant has changed his policy, and that he now intends to _force_ that form of Christianity on each Indian tribe that _he_ may think is best for each.”

But it was all in vain. Friend Gibson carried his point, and, although he has since been compelled to retire from the agency, it is still in the hands of the Quaker organization. The population of the reservation, according to the last report, was 2,679; very nearly the whole of these are good and faithful Catholic Christians; but the agent reports: “Church members, none; churches, none; missionaries, none!” The Quakers have driven away the Catholic priests, and have not even taken the trouble to send a missionary of their own to fill their place.

But we must make an end, although we have only, as it were, touched the skirt of our subject. Time and space would fail us to tell of the priest in California who was thrown into prison, brutally beaten, and expelled from his flock, for the offence of coming to his old mission after the agency had been assigned to a Protestant sect; of the bishops who have been denied permission to build churches and schools on reservations for the use of Catholic Indians; of the frauds committed by Protestant agents on Catholic tribes; of the mingled tyranny and temptation with which the Protestant agents have repeatedly assailed our poor Indian brethren, making their apostasy the condition of their rescue from starvation. Are not all these things written in the reports of the Indian Bureau, in the annals of the Catholic Indian missions, and in the letters of our bishops and priests published from time to time?

The duty of the Catholic laity throughout the United States in this business is clear. Happily, the way for the discharge of this duty has been made easy. It is simply to provide generously for the support and increase of the work of the Bureau of Catholic Missions at Washington. This bureau was established in January, 1873; it is composed of a commissioner, appointed by the Archbishop of Baltimore, with the concurrence in council of the archbishops of the United States; a treasurer and director; and a Board of Control, of five members, appointed in like manner. The commissioner is a layman; he is recognized by the government as the representative of the church in all matters among the Indians. The treasurer and director must be a priest; the president of the Board of Control must be a priest; the other four members are laymen. The salaries of the commissioner and of the Board of Control are—nothing. Their work, like that of the directors in the councils of the Propaganda, is given in charity. “General Charles Ewing, the commissioner,” says Father Brouillet, “has for over four years generously given to the work of the bureau his legal services and a large portion of his valuable time gratuitously. He never made any charge nor received any pay for his services, and on more than one occasion he has advanced his own money to keep up the work.” The director and treasurer and two clerks are the only persons connected with the bureau who are paid, and their united salaries are only $1,000 a year. The whole expenditures of the bureau, for salaries, printing, stationery, postage, rent, and travelling, have not exceeded $1,600 a year during the four years of its existence—all the balance of its funds going directly to the benefit of the missions. The business of the bureau is to defend Catholic Indian missions against the organized assault which has been made upon them. For those desirous of aiding so good a work we add the information that “all remittances to the treasurer of the Catholic Indian mission fund should be by draft on New York or by post-office order, and should be addressed to lock-box 60, Washington, D. C.”

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ST. HEDWIGE.[11]

The bulwark of Christendom is the title which Poland long claimed and well deserved, even when the country now known as that of Sobieski and Kosciusko was itself half-barbarous, and, instead of being a brilliant, many-provinced kingdom, was a disunited confederation of sovereigns. Among the many mediæval heroes who fought the invading Tartars on the east, and the aggressive heathen Prussians on the west, and looked upon their victories as triumphs of the cross and their death as a kind of martyrdom, were two Henrys, “the Bearded” and “the Pious,” the husband and the son of the holy Princess Hedwige, Duchess of Silesia and Poland during the first half of the thirteenth century. Her life, chiefly through her connection with other princely houses, was an eventful and sorrowful one, and, towards the last years of it, personally a checkered one. If God chastises those whom he loves, the mark of grace was surely set upon St. Hedwige of Andechs, the aunt of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and second daughter of a Bavarian sovereign whose titles and possessions included parts of Istria, Croatia and Dalmatia, Swabia, and the Tyrol. The life and customs of the thirteenth century, the magnificence on state occasions, and the simplicity, not to say rudeness, of domestic life at ordinary times; the difficulty of communication, and consequently the long separations between friends and kindred; the prominent part of religion in all the good works and public improvements of the day; the tales and legends that grew up among the people; the traditions which there was no one to investigate or contradict, and which did duty then for newspaper and magazine gossip; the personal connection between the sovereign and his people, and the primitive ideal of charity unclouded by doubts and theories, experiments and “commissions”; the summary processes of justice, tempered only by the pleadings of generous and tender women; government in a chaotic state, the profession of arms the dominant one, private wars at every turn, and individual acts of heroism, barbarity, and charity all alike received as a matter of course—all this is well known, and is equally true of all Christian and civilized lands of that day.

But as you went eastward through Europe confusion increased and manners grew rougher; primitive standards of right and wrong existed under the name of the law of the strongest; and whatever generosity human nature displayed was an untutored impulse, a half-heathen quality guided by a natural sense of honor rather than by fixed rules of morality. The Slavs, the Czechs, and the Magyars were magnificent barbarians, as the Franks and Teutons of four centuries earlier had been—Christians, indeed, and as fiercely so as Clovis when he drew his sword at the first recital of the Passion and exclaimed, “Would to God I and my Franks had been there”; but unrestrained and wild, more generous than obedient towards the church, which they would rather endow and defend than curb their passions in accordance with its teachings—splendid material, but an unwrought mine. Bishops and priests had fallen into loose ways among them and lost the respect of the people; vassals of the great lords, they stood on much the same level as the secular clergy at present do in Russia, and the popes had long striven in vain to make them give up marriage when they took Holy Orders. The parish clergy were mostly ignorant men, often employed in common labor to support their families, while of teaching monasteries or any places where learning was imparted and respected there were very few.

Hedwige came from a well-regulated country, where church dignitaries were the equals of civil ones, where the Roman standard was paramount, and churchmen were looked upon as powerful and learned men. Monasteries for both sexes abounded; Hedwige herself had been brought up by the Benedictines at Kitzingen, where her special friend and teacher, Petrussa, many years afterwards, followed her into Silesia and became the first abbess of the monastery of Trebnitz, near Breslau. Hedwige, whose mind was from her earliest years in advance of her time, and who mastered all the accomplishments of a woman of high station at that day before she was twelve years old, set herself the task of bettering her adopted country as soon as she had entered it. The men of that time knew less than the women; for their education, unless they were destined for the church, was purely military. Ecclesiastics were lawyers, doctors, authors, travellers, _savants_, poets, and schoolmasters; while the majority of laymen were only soldiers. But the women of corresponding birth were taught Latin and a good deal of medicine, besides household knowledge, embroidery, the national literature, music, and painting. For the times this was no unworthy curriculum. They had a practical knowledge of surgery and of the healing herbs of the field—which, in days when the chances of life and death often hung on the possibility of reaching or finding a physician within the radius of forty or fifty miles, was a very valuable gift—and an equally practical and useful acquaintance with all the details of housekeeping. Nothing in those days was “made easy”; mechanical contrivances for saving time and trouble were not thought of; and even the highest people worked slowly with their hands and did cheerfully without the luxuries which a cottage would scarcely lack in these days. Hedwige in her later years—for she never gave up her habits of industry—often reminded her attendants of the maxim, “He that worketh not, neither let him eat,” and would never allow that the rule did not apply to sovereigns as well as to private individuals. Her own life was laborious; she rose with the dawn, winter and summer, and, though her devotions took up many hours, she yet had enough to give to the education of her children, the making of vestments for poor churches, and of clothes for her pensioners. Her virtues, which were great and generous, flowed naturally into the mould of her time; she built and endowed monasteries, interceded for prisoners and criminals, made daily distributions of alms to the poor, nursed the sick and leprous in the hospitals—which she was the first in her adopted country to found and secure—and she brought up a number of orphan children. Of these she was so fond that when she travelled she took them with her in several covered wagons. Later on she kept in the palace at Breslau, at her own expense, thirteen poor men, whom she served every day at dinner, just before her own meal, and otherwise ministered to their wants in memory of our Lord and his apostles. In fact, her life is a kind of transcript of that of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and even the poetical legends of miracles wrought to turn away her husband’s displeasure, familiar to us all through the pictures of St. Elizabeth and the bread turned to roses, have a counterpart in Hedwige’s life.