THE INDIANS.
SPEECH OF ELI ABRAHAM, A NATIVE INDIAN.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE DAKOTA ASSOCIATION.
My Friends: When I was fifteen years old I learned to read God’s Word; and from the time I learned to read it I have desired earnestly to know what was in it.
Although I did not know much, it has been my work now for about eighteen years to teach others, the boys and girls and young people who have come to school at Santee. When our school first began we held it in a log house covered with dirt, and with a hay floor. The boys and girls came to school wearing their blankets, and they sat on the ground to study. But now we have good buildings, and besides teaching in books, our pupils are taught various industries—such as shoemaking, blacksmithing, carpentry and farming, and our girls in all home work.
Our boys like to take exercise in playing base ball, and I have noticed that when the base ball clubs of white young men from the towns around come in to play ball with them, the white young men get beaten; or when they try their speed with our boys in foot races, they also get beaten. And it seems to me that if our young men can be rightly instructed, they are sure to make good progress.
It has been my work to teach our scholars in the Bible. They come from many different tribes. Some are Titon Sioux, some Grosventres, some Poncas, some Arapahoes, some Yanktons, some Brules, yet all learn to read the Bible in our Santee dialect, and the past year I have been much pleased because of their interest in it. Often they ask so many questions that we don’t get on very far with our reading.
It seems to me that the best way to train up a people is to begin with the children. It is like this: Once I pulled up a little seedling tree a foot high, and planted it near my house, where I watered it and cared for it. When the dogs scratched it over, or the oxen trod on it, I straightened it up again. Then I drove down a strong stake beside it, and I tied it up in whatever direction it was crooked. Now, after ten years, it is a tall, straight tree. So it seems to me that if we take the children and bring them up straight, we shall have an upright nation, and that by God’s Word we shall make them truly upright.