MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
The social morality of the various tribes differs very much at the present time. Under our original customs, the purity of woman and the home was safeguarded by strict rules, with severe penalties for their transgression. When, however, native customs were broken down without the efficient substitution of civilized laws, there was much social irregularity.
Plural marriages were permissible under our system, but were not very general, and plural wives were usually sisters. The missionaries, and in some instances the Federal authorities, have required elderly men to abandon all but one wife, leading to difficult problems. Many of the younger generation are now legally married, and an effort is made to oblige them to secure legal divorces when a separation is sought, but as some state courts hold that they have no jurisdiction to hear applications of non-citizen Indians living on reservations, this is often impracticable, and naturally the dissatisfied simply abandon wife or husband, and perhaps take another by Indian custom only. It is advisable that family records be more strictly kept than is now the case.
UNEDUCATED LEADERS AMONG INDIANS
I wish to refute the common misconception that it is only the educated and Christian Indian who has contributed to the progress of his people and to the common good of both races. There are many men wholly unlettered, and some of whom have not proclaimed themselves followers of Christ, who have yet exerted great influence on the side of civilization. Almost every tribe has a hero of this type who arose at a critical juncture to lead his fellows.
In the early part of the nineteenth century there was Little Turtle, a celebrated Miami chief, who, to be sure, defended his country bravely, but when he made a treaty he stood by it faithfully, and advocated peace and civilization for his people. The Pottawatomie chief Pokagon was another, whose son Simon Pokagon was prominent at the World's Fair in Chicago. A leading contemporary of these men was Keokuk of the Sacs and Foxes. Wabashaw the third, of the Mississippi Sioux, was known as a strong friend to civilization; and so was my own great-grandfather, Chief Cloud Man, whose village occupied the present site of the city of Minneapolis. His son, Appearing Sacred Stone, whose English name was David Weston, was a fine character—a hereditary chief who took a homestead at Flandreau and became a native preacher under Bishop Hare.
Chief Strike-the-Ree, by whose influence and diplomacy the Yankton Sioux were kept neutral throughout the Sioux wars; Lone Wolf of the Kiowas, Quanah Parker of the Comanches, whose mother was a white captive, and Governor James Big Heart of the Osages were all men of this type, natural leaders and statesmen. Iron Eyes, or Joseph La Flesche, a head chief of the Omahas, was a notable leader in progressive ways; and so is John Grass of the Blackfoot Sioux, also a distinguished orator.
Men like this, of native force and fire, but without advantages other than those shared by the mass of their people, are possibly more deserving of honor than are the few who have made the most of exceptional opportunities. If anything, they illustrate more clearly the innate capacity and moral strength of the race.
When it is considered that of the three hundred and odd thousand Indians in the United States, only about two thirds are still living on reservations under the control of the Indian Bureau, the official figures concerning that two thirds are surprising to most of us. We are told that 50,000 able-bodied adults are entirely self-supporting, and that only 17,000 Indians of all classes are receiving rations. Twenty-two thousand are employed on wages and salaries, earning more than two million dollars yearly. Three fourths of the families live in permanent houses; 100,000 persons speak English, and 161,000 wear citizen's clothing. Such is the average present-day Indian at home—a man who earns his own living, speaks the language of the country, wears its dress, and obeys its laws. Surely it is but one step further to American citizenship!