Superintendent Paquette at Fort Defiance is extending education work throughout his reservation, and reaches a larger percentage of children of school age than are being reached elsewhere in the Navaho country.
In concluding his report, Mr. Allen points out the failure of the returned student to make good and the reasons for it.
“The problem of the returned student is a serious one among the Navaho. The boys and girls who have been for years in school come back to their people without a training for taking care of the flocks, and are outdone by those who remain at home. They are for this reason more or less looked down upon, with the result that they have no inclination to continue the habits of study and cleanliness which they have acquired at school and which are not appreciated in the home. The effort of the old men of the tribe is to keep the children who return from school from seeking any higher place than is enjoyed by other members of the family. If the young men and the young women of the tribe, who have received an education and who have acquired an appreciation of what they learned in school, intermarried, the benefits of their education would be more permanent, but many of the girls upon their return from school are given in marriage by their parents to old men of the tribe, and many of the boys return only to find that they are required to marry old women, or at best, ‘camp girls’ as they are called—the uneducated girls of the hogan. The inevitable result is that they go back to the old life.”
CHAPTER XXV. INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST
The Indians of the great Northwest, are today of many diversified and small bands, chief among which are the Crows, Utes, Nez Perces, Paiutes, Northern Cheyennes, Blackfeet, and Yakimas, and various Columbia River bands. Linguistically they are Athapascan, Salishan and Shoshonean stocks with remnants of other stocks along the Pacific coast. Practically all of them live on reservations. As in the case of the other tribes described in this volume, the children have been educated, allotments have been granted to most of the individuals, irrigation schemes either projected or carried into effect, timber sold, or Government sawmills established, and the entire life of the Indians changed. The narrative, therefore, must be along historical and philanthropic lines rather than ethnologic. True, up to about 1880 many of these Indians lived in their original condition, and particularly is this true of the Paiute and Modoc bands located far from the established routes of travel. The Indians of the Northwest came in contact with the trappers and gold-hunters flocking to the new country made familiar by the Lewis and Clark expedition. As an inevitable result, a number of wars occurred in which all of the Indians were more or less engaged. The most noted of these was the Nez Perce war of 1877, in which Chief Joseph led his Indians on a magnificent retreat through the mountains for upwards of 1100 miles to nearly the Canadian border. The story of our broken faith with the Nez Perces is set forth in many documents and by General Howard himself in his book, “Chief Joseph. His Pursuit and Capture.”
Following the Nez Perce war, in 1878, the Bannock Indians, a numerous division of the Shoshonean stock, were so harassed by white people that they went upon the warpath. A number of settlers and soldiers were killed, and in September, 1878, the outbreak came to an end after the military had killed all the women and children in a village of twenty lodges.
In 1870 the Modocs in southeastern Oregon had obtained a very unsavory reputation. This was due to their resenting the encroachments of the Whites. Many settlers, and also friendly Indians, were killed during various encounters. The trouble culminated in the famous siege of the lava beds, on the California frontier between Oregon and California. Here the Indians located in an almost impregnable stronghold and withstood the attacks of troops from January to April, 1873. Some Peace Commissioners, headed by General Camby, were sent to treat with the Indians and these were treacherously murdered. After hard fighting the stronghold was taken and five of the leaders captured and hanged. Like other Northwest tribes (except larger bands) the Modocs have so dwindled in numbers that they now cease to be a factor in Indian life. The northern Cheyennes now located on a reservation at Lame Deer, Montana, have long been known as a fighting people. Two generations ago the Cheyennes were much in evidence with the Sioux and other tribes in an attempt to prevent the usurpation of their hunting grounds and grazing lands on the part of the Whites. One of the Department Inspectors recently visited their reservation and under date of September 17th, writes me as follows:
“I am very busy and am finding conditions here about as bad as they were at White Earth except that these Indians have not been allotted and are not losing their land, but they are just as poor and are eating dogs, horseflesh, prairie dogs, porcupines and skunks. Conditions are disgraceful but will be properly presented, you may be sure.”
The Crow Indians, an offshoot of the Siouan stock, in Montana, are numerically the strongest of any of the mountain tribes. They possess a very large reservation, abundant grazing lands, timber and agricultural possibilities. However, as in the case of the Cheyennes, they have been backward in spite of all efforts on the part of the Government to educate them. The problem on their reservation relates chiefly to the grazing privilege. The Indians were leasing a vast tract of land to white men for the pasturing of cattle and horses at so much per head. The Whites took advantage of the Indians’ ignorance and it was necessary for the Indian Rights Association to conduct a thorough investigation. I quote from the Association’s report as to former conditions among the Crows, and the present improvement.
“The Crow Reservation, in Montana, had for years been controlled by a small ring of men, who boasted of strong political backing, and they used it for their private gain at the expense of those Indians, through the connivance of the Agent, who had formerly been employed in a bank of which the leader of this ring was the principal stockholder. For three years the Indian Rights Association sought to have a real investigation made at that point by the Department, but instead of receiving any encouragement, its efforts were blocked at every turn. Secretary Garfield had said to us, ‘bring me facts, and I will investigate them,’ but he refused to give us a formal permit to enable us to go on to the reservation and get those facts. When our Secretary was sent there for that purpose, a little later, he was promptly arrested and ordered off the reservation at his earliest convenience.