Bishop Whipple bears the following testimony to the good effect of making the Indians feel the responsibility of individual distinctive effort for themselves by vesting them with individual rights of property and by compelling them to live by their own labor:
“Twenty years ago we began with a small number of Indians at White Earth Reservation. They were wild folk, used only to savage life. Now there are 1,800 people living like civilized beings. They have houses built by themselves. They are self-supporting. It is an orderly, law-abiding, peaceful community. In religion they are about equally divided between the Episcopalian and Catholic churches. The laws are administered by an Indian police. This year they raised 40,000 bushels of wheat and 30,000 bushels of oats. They have a herd of 1,200 or 1,500 cattle, several hundred horses, swine, sheep and fowls. They are proud of their homes and of living in them like white people. They are as neat and orderly as old-fashioned Dutch housekeepers. They are excellent cooks, too; they never need to be shown twice how to cook anything. Their sewing is the most beautiful I ever saw; it is impossible to see the stitches. They have made all the carpets and bedding I have in my house. The contrast, therefore, between these White Earth people and the scattered bands of Chippewas shows plainly what can be accomplished with them by adopting right methods. The latter are utterly degraded.”
In the February Missionary we commented on the causes which had led the Executive Committee of the Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to direct the Trustees of the Chattanooga University to ask Professor Caulkins for his resignation. This the Trustees refused to do, and, in view of a current expectation that colored students would again seek admission, they have passed a series of “whereases” affirming that the University was designed for white pupils, and not intended to be a mixed school; that well-equipped schools for colored pupils were easily accessible; that to admit colored students would injure the school, defeat the object for which it was established, alienate the races and prove especially detrimental to the interests of the colored people; that the General Conference had declared the question of mixed schools to be one of expediency “to be left to the choice and administration of those on the ground, and more immediately concerned,” and then wound up with a resolution declaring that they deemed it inexpedient to admit colored students to the University, and instructed the Faculty to administer accordingly.
Such action on the part of the trustees could not be permitted to pass unnoticed. The Executive Committee of the Freedmen’s Aid Society called a meeting of the Board of Managers, and submitted for consideration the above-noted “whereases” and “resolution.” The whole subject received full consideration. We have not space to publish the report in full, but it is all summed up in the last resolution, as follows:
“Resolved, That if the Chattanooga University fail to secure the resignation of Prof. Wilford Caulkins, to take effect at a date not later than the close of the present school term, and to so modify its action as not to exclude from instruction in that institution students on account of race or color; i. e., if the said university fail in either of these particulars, we hereby instruct our Executive Committee to secure, by agreement, if possible, with the Trustees of said University, the immediate termination of the contract between the Chattanooga University and the Freedmen’s Aid Society; and, in case a termination of said contract be not secured by mutual agreement, in either of the contingencies named above, to notify the Trustees of the Chattanooga University, within sixty days from this 24th day of February, 1887, of the termination of the contract as provided in the same.”
This brings matters to an issue. We congratulate the Board of Managers of the Freedmen’s Aid Society upon the stand taken.