There is not a white parent of intelligence in America who would send children to school if in that school there was danger from disease. When Cornell had a small epidemic of typhoid fever, the institution was closed; the same is true of Milton Academy when a few pupils were taken with scarlet fever. Phillips Academy, at Andover, closed its doors some years ago when less than four per cent of the student body became affected with measles. Yet in past years these Indian schools have continued in the even tenor of their way, including among their membership children suffering from some form of tuberculosis or trachoma. I observed that with my own eyes in Minnesota in 1909.
You cannot expect the Indian—who is just as human as we are ourselves—to wax enthusiastic over education when such intolerable conditions obtain. All the Indian knows is that the child comes home sick, and he having no facilities for proper treatment, unless the child’s constitution is unusually strong, the child dies or is disabled.
Right here I wish to pay a tribute to one of the leading Sioux, Chief White Horse. He said: “I sent my own boy to school first, as an example to the others. I sent my children to a nearby school until they were old enough, and then I was one of the first to send them to Hampton, Virginia, to school. They all came home and died of consumption.”[[41]]
While we all believe in education, yet I affirm that there is neither a man nor a woman in all America who would willingly, and gladly, send one child after another to a school so managed that the children contracted tuberculosis and died. The average white man and woman would refuse to send other children to such a school, after the first one had died; and a system of education productive of consumptives, would be indignantly denounced in unmeasured terms. President Lincoln wrote a beautiful letter to Mrs. Bixby, when she gave to her country five sons who were killed in battle during the Civil War. Mrs. Bixby was a white woman, and of some education. Lincoln’s letter to her is celebrated in the United States. Poor old White Horse was an untutored Indian, and yet his faith in the white man and his ways rose to sublime heights. He deserves a place among the heroes of peace. In return for his simple trust, we murdered his sons and daughters.
There has been a wide diversity of opinion among persons as to the wisdom of our general educational policy for Indians. This is not confined to those employed by the Interior Department, who serve as Superintendents and teachers. It is more largely shared by missionaries and other observers.
Many of the persons who furnished me with data for my table of statistics also wrote out their views at considerable length. These are valuable in that they are sincere; they come from men and women who are in direct contact with the people. We will omit all those who agree with our present policy. It may be summed up thus: to give the Indians vocational training; to ground them in the rudiments and to make of them farmers, mechanics, carpenters, stockmen, lumbermen, weavers, etc., rather than to attempt to fit so many of them for higher callings. It is well to consider the opinions of several persons residing in separate communities in the great West, and I herewith append their statements, but omit the names of the writers.
“Allow me to make one more remark. As far as I can see, the fact that the condition of the Indians is not satisfactory is due largely to the nature of the education provided for them. I think that the education given them is too high and far above their condition in life. It seems to me to be an attempt to make them leap from the bottom to the top rung of the ladder of civilization without having them touch those that lie between. They are not yet far enough advanced in civilization and culture to enable them to follow successfully the higher pursuits of civilized social life, against which the present educational methods try to put them. Thus when leaving school, they are unable to compete with Whites of equal education, while they are unwilling and often unqualified to take up farming or mechanics.”
Naturally they all will have to work for a living, and the proper and only occupation that would make them self-supporting will be farming or other manual labor. But having passed ten or more years at Carlisle, Hampton, etc., and coming home to the reservation, serious work is no longer to their liking. Playing and spending money for amusement is about the only thing they know and care for. If they get a position in the Indian Service, they get along as long as they are able to hold it. But the day they are discharged for any reason, they join the army of grumblers and idlers, and help to raise the howl—the Indians are cheated, robbed and trodden under foot.
The fact is, as long as they go to school they are coddled and furnished with everything, as only children of well-to-do parents are in a position to enjoy. Then when they are finished, so that they have to stand on their own feet and make their own living, they are not able to do it. Whatever has been used for their education is worn, then thrown away. It has been used to spoil and enervate them, has made honest work hateful to them, has certainly not fitted them for the task of earning an honest livelihood suited to their condition of life.
“It is my opinion that a thorough eighth-grade common school education along with a good training in industrial and economic habits would bring far more satisfactory results. It would be more suited to their present stage in their advancement towards civilization, they would then more easily take to farming and other general work, and train them to be self-supporting. This would fill out the gap, which men have been trying to bridge over by forcing an intellectual education upon semi-barbaric Indian children. This is, however, not saying that a higher education should be denied to those that show inclination, talent and character for advancement.”