MEMORIAL ON INDIAN EDUCATION.
ADOPTED BY THE CHICAGO MINISTERS’ MEETING.
To his Excellency the President of the United States:
The Congregational ministers of Chicago and vicinity, in their weekly session at the Grand Pacific, September 5th, to the number of thirty-five, desire to memorialize you in behalf of a modification of the recent orders of the Indian Department, whereby the use of the native language is interdicted in all Indian reservation schools, not only those that are under Government patronage, in whole or in part, but also those that are private or are under missionary societies.
From the first we have favored the policy proposed by missionaries among the Indians, now adopted by the Government, and heartily approved by yourself, of bringing these aborigines into American citizenship and of securing them land in severalty, with the surplus turned into a school fund.
Nor do we question the motives of the heads of the Indian Department. Indeed this is forefended by the fact, as semi-officially stated, that “the question of the effect of the policy of the office upon any missionary body has never been considered;” and this fact gives us the more assurance in soliciting you, that the missionary view may yet receive a due consideration.
We are clear, with the Indian officials, that in the effort to Americanize these natives, the English language must be introduced as fast as possible. But we would not do this to the total exclusion of the native tongues in the missionary and interior station schools, being confident that the final result will be more speedily secured by the use, in part, of the Indian language.
We are confident that the greatest civilizing power among any pagan people will be that which comes from the ideas and the influence of the Christian religion; and that these can be made most effective through the Bible of that religion in the native tongue. This has been the wisdom of missions in all times and countries, and none the less in those to the Indians of America. By this process alone have we secured the civilized “nations” we now have in the Indian Territory, in New York, in Wisconsin and in other parts of our country. So the missionaries to the Sioux gave them the Bible, the catechism, Pilgrim’s Progress, spelling-books and readers in their own dialect, and in this way gave them the really American ideas, as well as the religion of Christ. And what is the result? Two thousand of them gathered into the Christian church and twice that number civilized.
Of the people it is not possible that any but the children will be taught English, and of these, for a long time, only a small portion. For the adult people and even for the young, as for the process of helping them to heaven, “one hour of their vernacular is worth a cycle of any other tongue,” and this must be from the native’s Bible in hand. The new order will close eighteen schools and stations of our missionary body, and as many more under the care of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. It will deprive seven or eight hundred children of the instruction they are fitted to receive, and will prevent access to about 6,000 who are near these schools, but not yet reached. Principal Belfield of our Chicago Manual Training School, after a recent visit to the Normal and Industrial Training School of the Santee Agency, under Rev. Alfred L. Riggs, reported in one of our dailies, in terms of the warmest admiration and commendation, of the comprehensive system of manual, industrial and moral training of that school, which he declared was working a wonderful transformation among the Indian youth of both sexes. And yet it is against this school in particular that the new orders are aimed. And this, not because the English language is not chiefly used there, but solely because the Dakota, in connection with the English, is used at school in reading the Bible and singing gospel hymns.
The station schools back in the interior of the Sioux Reservation, under native teachers only, having no connection with the Government, are also ordered closed. But these teachers have been trained at the Santee and Oahe schools, to which some of their pupils have been brought forward; and these again furnish the scholars who are secured for the institutions at the East where the English is exclusively used. This process shows the relation of the vernacular schools to those of the advanced English. It also shows how unfair it is to decide the whole case of teaching exclusive English by the selected specimens to be found at Hampton and Carlisle.
This plan keeps up a connection between the young and the old, between the raw interior and the more civilized front. It agrees with the established policy for assimilating people of foreign tongues in our country—that of using both the vernacular and the English in their public worship. It would be a gross usurpation for our country to interdict such peoples from thus using their native language in parish schools for imparting their own religious views of truth and duty.
We feel sure that to insist that these new candidates for citizenship, in addition to all the other new things implied in this revolution of their old ways, shall be tied up in all their schools to a new language, will be a disheartenment that will defeat the desired result.
Our petition is, that you will secure such a modification of the recent orders as will allow, in private and mission schools, a discretionary use of the native along with the English language, and all this in order, as we think, to a more speedy extinction of the one, and the prevalence of the other, among all the Indian tribes.
And so we respectfully appeal.
(Signed)
J. D. McCord, Pres.
(Signed) F. D. Rood, Sec.