In the June Missionary we mentioned a watch sent us by a widow. It was a cherished memento. Not being able to make an offering of money, she gave us that which represented to her more than money. A reader of the Missionary, noticing the gift, has kindly sent us more than double its market value in redemption.
We are pained to record the death of Mrs. J. H. Parr, which occurred in Chicago, April 3d. Mrs. Parr first went South under appointment of the A. M. A., in November, 1884, to take charge of the musical department at Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas. At the close of that school year, with her husband she went to Quitman, Ga. The trying experiences in connection with the persecution of our missionaries, and especially the incendiary burning of our school-house at Quitman, gave her nerves such a shock that she never fully recovered from it. The last six months of her life she seemed to be improving. They were months marked by special Christian activity, aiding her husband in his work as a pastor. But death came suddenly, and it was clearly manifest that her nervous forces, so fearfully overtaxed and shattered by the experience of that terrible night in Quitman, were very far from being restored. We commend the bereaved husband to the benediction of the loving Father who sympathizes with all his children in the day of their affliction.
The Herald, of Greenville, Miss., is responsible for the statement that a Negro who was serving out a small fine on the chain-gang at Vicksburg, for refusing to work had $100 added to his fine. The same paper also states that George Young (white), convicted of forgery and confined in Kemper Co. jail, was taken from prison and set at liberty by a party of masked men. This may be taken as a sample of the difference between the way justice is meted out to white and black criminals in Mississippi. The color line is certainly drawn. A good thing for Justice that her eyes are blinded. The hand in which she holds her sword would certainly move to smite the discriminators, could she have a sight at the outrage.
A committee of the U.S. Senate, consisting of Senators Platt, Blackburn and Cullom, have been investigating Indian matters. A long telegram, every point of which tells against the Indians, professing to be based on the investigations of this committee, has been sent out all over the country. Depend upon it, when so lengthy a telegram is sent over the wires of the Associated Press, there is an agency behind it that has an axe to grind. The dispatch was so one-sided that any careful reader could not help seeing that in so far as it stated facts, they were but partially stated. It said the committee had witnessed a dance among the Osages, and that “it was especially sad to learn that two of the sprightliest of the dancers, covered almost all over with little looking-glasses, sleigh-bells, rings, feathers and ribbons, were graduates of the Carlisle Indian School, who have relapsed into shameless savagery.” If this language, taken in connection with its setting, means anything, it means a slur at Indian education. But suppose the telegram had said that there had been connected with the Carlisle School, in all, eighty-four Osages; that none of them stayed in the school over three years; that more than a half of them remained less than a year, and that there have been no Osages at the school since August, 1885; had the telegram made that statement, there would be nothing “particularly sad” in the discovery that two out of the eighty-four had yielded to the tremendous temptation to fall back into ways out of which they had never been lifted. It is sad, of course, that these people are savages, but the spirit that lurks behind this telegram is far sadder. It is absurd to talk of these youth as lapsing. Indian education is not to be judged by the conduct of those who have been in school from less than one year up to three years at most; nor, even had they been in school for ten or fifteen years, is it to be condemned should it be proved that two out of eighty-four, yielding to temptation, had fallen.
It will interest the readers of the Missionary to learn that the Act of Congress for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians provides that every head of an Indian family shall be settled on 160 acres; every unmarried person over eighteen years of age, and every orphan, shall have 80 acres; and every single person under eighteen born before the President issues the order making allotments, 40 acres. The allotments so made are to be inalienable for 25 years, and the lands remaining over are to be bought of the Indians by the Government and opened to homestead settlement only; such homesteads in tracts of 160 acres to be inalienable also for five years. When the allotments have been made, all the Indians are declared to be citizens of the United States, entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities of such citizens.