had? "--or something to that effect. The Indian looked at the lawyer a while and then said, "I think so". I am telling this to illustrate how often we approach these people with just such complicated ideas in our heads, which, often, we don't understand ourselves but expect them to understand. Another story illustrates the point directly. Some years ago a special agent came from Washington with a message to a certain western tribe. He attempted to impress upon the Indians a conception of the rich blessing they were enjoying through American citizenship; but of course they did not comprehend it. He assured them that the great father in Washington had given them all these blessings and the protection of the country backed by a great army and a great navy. "We have heard in Washington", he said, "that some of you are living with two wives. We are pained to know that this is true". The Indians made little response until a man of middle age arose and said: "We are sorry to know that the great father feels this so deeply. It is true that some of us live with two women. It is true, but we keep those two women in the same tent, the same house. I find that some white men live with a woman as his wife in one house but has another wife sometimes in another house, but does not say anything about it. Our fault must be because we have them both together in the same house and tell about it." Last Friday a young man and a young woman came to me, not together, separately as a friend. The young man was quite well educated. The young woman said she expected to be married. She did not tell the prospective husband's name but said only, "He will come". In an hour or so the young man came and said: "We are going to be married". He did not say to whom--only that she had been here. They asked me to go to Sioux City with them and help them to get a license. I replied, jokingly, |
I will go with you but there is one thing that I always do in such circumstances, or if I have anything to do with the ceremony, I always kiss the bride." He did not know whether I was joking or not. He hesitated a long time before replying: "Well, we will see. I guess we have to have you go along and I guess, sir, that will be all right this time." I think one of the most amusing stories of Indian life that I have heard was told to me about two years ago, about an old man, a fine old character and philosopher, who had discovered the right way of living and who was bubbling over with good nature all the time, telling about some jokes that passed among them in early days. A young man called MAESHTIEGA (meaning a rabbit) had been married a few years and his wife was one of the substantial kind with some very decided ideas. There was a little trouble council in which a man, after talking for some time with much agitation, said: "My friends, there is something I want to tell you all. My wife loves another man"--speaking his name. This seemed to have a depressing effect upon those present. Finally the speaker picked up his wife's blankets and laid them down at the feet of the other man, saying: "I have no ill will toward you or against either of you". In Indian life that was the bravest thing a man could do. It was one of the greatest acts of personal sacrifice that a man could make. It was very uncommon also; but, believing that his wife loved another man more than she loved him, he gave her to him. Among those present there was a flutter of excitement, showing sympathy and admiration for the husband for his bravery. Rabbit was looking on and listening. He realized what this man had done, the bravest thing that a man could do. Rabbit was a brave man himself, though he was so good-natured about it that the people did not take him seriously. But he got |
up, thinking he was going to make a name for himself, and, pointing to a certain man among them, said: "it is a great sacrifice that I am making but I give my wife to that man". There was no occasion for it. The old lady wrapped the blankets about her and said, "No you don't, I shall go to my father's tent". And she took her blankets and few belongings and went to her father's tent. Rabbit's bravery had been turned into ridicule; and the story goes that that night Rabbit was heard approaching the tent of his wife's father singing and calling her to come back. So the Omaha made up a little song about it of which I wish I could give you the translation. It was a very clever take-off on the old man's bravery. On the Omaha reservation we had another character; I am sure she was something like Mrs. Partington. She spoke English. I have never met another person who could twist great big words around as she could. My wife and I once called on the old lady and she gave me a present. Then she went over to my wife and said: "Now, Mrs. Keefe, you must not be jocose (meaning jealous) about this man." She was telling a short time before about her father, who was a fine old man. She said he told her that the people were not eating the right things, but were eating a lot of things out of tin cans, and that was not the right way. When he was young he did not eat meat, but he ate turnips and herbs and such things, and those old people who ate those things never died but these other people died, because they ate things out of stores and out of tin cans. Then she said to her father, "Those old people never die?" He said, "No; when I was a young man they never died." She replied, "My father, where are those old people that never died, where are they now?" And added: "Then father he can't talk any more." It is true that those people in the early days lived on what nature furnished. In fact, we hear people say after |
they come from the reservation, "How are these people going to support themselves, or is the government supporting them? Where are they finding sustenance and how?" They supported themselves a long time before the white people came and very few of them ever perished from want.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: |
taking their place as citizens under our form of government and working under our industrial system. I knew an old man who was of mature age when the tribe went upon the reservation. He lived the old life and was known as a good member of the tribe in the old way of life. When, in 1855, they were put upon the reservation, he, along with all the others, had to make his life all over again; and he succeeded to such an extent that he was as good a farmer as there was in the county. He could not read the Twentieth Century Farmer and got no help from farmers' institutes. He had to work out his own salvation. When he died he had a good farm and cultivated all the grains grown in our climate. He raised cattle, hogs and poultry. The care of poultry is the last thing an Indian will undertake, because to do so he must stay at home to watch the young chicks, and he does not like to be so bound down, but this man had all these things. There is no primitive people that has so strong a hold on our imagination as the American Indians. How large a place they occupy in the history of this country! I regret that there is so much fanciful writing concerning them. The truth would be more interesting and better reading than the wild fancies of writers who wish to produce what they suppose readers require. There is so much quackery practiced by white people in their writing about the Indians. There are many people who go to the reservation, look at them, go away and write volumes when they do not know what they are writing about. The Indian had started in the way of agriculture. The greatest cereal in our country was developed from the wild state by Indian planters, laboriously working with rude tools. Think of the long generations and succession of ages required to develop maize--Indian corn. All evidences of botany, philosophy, ethnology, folklore, and every avenue of approach to the question leads to the conclusion that the native place of |
the wild plant that was developed into corn was in the southern part of Mexico, among the Maya, a nation which had acquired a considerable degree of civilization. There are other plants that we have received from them. The bean--except the white navy bean, the soy bean, and perhaps one or two others from Asia; the potato from South America; the squash, red peppers, tomatoes, tobacco (though that is a gift of doubtful value) have come to us from the Indians. Of corn the Pawnee, Omaha, Ponka, and the Oto raised a number of varieties of all the different types that we have now. They cultivated fifteen kinds of beans, eight kinds of squash and one of melon. We have many medicines that we learned of from the Indians. A native Nebraska plant has become one of our best medicines. The old name was Echinacea angustifolia, but in the revised botanical nomenclature it is now called Brauneria pallida. It was known to the Indians many years ago, and Dr. Meyer, of Pawnee City, Nebraska, introduced it into our materia medica, some years ago. The art of making sugar from trees (maple sugar) is of American Indian origin. The eastern tribes make it from the hard maple trees, but the tribes out here in Nebraska made sugar from the sap of the soft maple. The Omaha word for sugar is ZHANNI, ZHAN means wood, and NI means water. The very word shows that they had the article before they ever saw a white man. In the Dakota language the word for sugar is CHAN HANPI, wood juice, or tree juice, CHAN meaning wood, and HANPI meaning juice. They would not have so called it if they had first seen it as the white man's manufactured product. Mr. Keefe said something about taking possession of this country from American Indians. It is common to speak of the Indians as dirty, lazy beings, hanging around white settlements begging. I would ask you who the beggars were a hundred years ago? In Nebraska the |
Indians were the independent people then. They knew how to live under conditions prevalent at that time. We did not. We had to beg from them shelter, food and clothing. Our trappers and explorers could not have lived without the aid of the Indians. They were dependent upon them. We were the beggars then. We have destroyed the, means of support they had. This is not the country now that it was to them at that time. It is wonderful that in one generation they could learn how to adapt themselves to these new conditions. They can not live now in the old way, because we have destroyed the resources they had. They have only just begun to adapt themselves to this new environment and to support themselves under these conditions. The woman's work then, as now, was much the same. Her job has not been changed. She was always, then and now, the home maker, but the man has been thrown out of a job because we have changed the conditions of life for him. He was a provider and defender under old conditions, as a hunter; but now he cannot provide because he does not know how under changed conditions. So it came to be said that the Indian "let the women do the work." The man's work is changed, so he must learn a new job. Imagine China coming over to America and overwhelming us and putting us on reservations and putting agents over us to mold us into the Chinese form of civilization. Imagine how reluctant we should be to take on that form of government and be molded that way, to wear our hair in a queue, to eat Chinese food, and wear Chinese clothes. How quickly we would go back to our old ways instead of the way the Chinese would want us to do. We would go back to our own way because it would be easier for us to act in our own way. I would not want to be made into a poor imitation of a Chinese; no more does the American Indian want to be made into a poor imitation of a |
European. By that illustration you can see how hard it has been for them to learn a new job. Mr. Keefe said that the American Indian is entitled to have preserved his true place in history. The Indians have affection for their home land. They revere the graves of their ancestors. They commemorate localities indentified (sic) with incidents of their tribal history. We are strangers in this land; we have not been here so very long. We are not attached to it by a long line of ancestry as they are. The Pawnee were a Nebraska people. Their country was all the middle part of Nebraska. They love it as their fatherland. Even the children born since they left Nebraska have heard so much about the old home land that they think of it with affection and are always glad to talk about it with any one from Nebraska. Now they are carried away into another land where climate and water and conditions of life are different; and as it was not their own choice, they went away in 1875 about 2,200 strong; they are less than seven hundred now. Weakened by the change in climate, by being pressed into the arbitrary mold of our manner of life, and by homesickness for the fatherland, they have dwindled down to a small number. The Omaha are about as numerous as they ever were. They are still in their fatherland. The Pawnee are not so fortunate. Indians of many tribes have been taken from every part of the country--from timbered lands, prairie lands and the mountains--and dumped into Oklahoma. We do not know the human interest that attaches to their former occupation and their early life in this land. We do not know how they lived. We do not know the songs they sang or the shrines they had. We do not know the holy places and the places of their graves. These would have been of great interest to us. I know it certainly would have been so to me. A student of the university came in and asked some questions concerning Indian geography and botany of |
Nebraska, and when I answered her questions and extended remarks on the aboriginal geography and botany and showed their correlations with the Indian life of the state' she said: "Nebraska now means more to me and is dearer than ever before." So when all our people know there is something of human interest that attaches to Nebraska it will be dearer to us although it was not our ancestors' home. As to the difference between Indians and white people, it has been said, "The Indian is just humanity bound in red." There is another saying which might apply here: "The colonel's lady and Julia O'Grady are sisters under the skin." Indians are different from us only superficially. We are brothers under the skin. I remember what an educated Omaha Indian woman said to me in speaking of the difficulty of being built over into a new form of life: "The Omaha have not had time to rightly learn the white man's civilization, because it has taken all their time and attention to keep from being cheated out of everything they have." Although her husband is a white man, and she was speaking to me, another white man, she said: "Sometimes I wish I might never see a white face again." She was not thinking of her husband, nor of me as a white man. She thought of her husband as a husband and not as a white man, just as she thought of me as a friend, not as a white man. She was thinking of white men in the mass. If you lived on the reservation, as Mr. Keefe does, you would know how true that is. I wonder whether Mr. Keefe had the story of MANSHTINGA correct or not. I heard it a little differently from his rendering. This is the story of the origin of a society in the Mandan tribe. A party were out scouting for the enemy, being in the enemy's country. One evening, at just about the beginning of the evening meal, as they |
were sitting around the fire, all at once they heard a voice singing a song of defiance. The leader put ashes over the fire to extinguish the light. Then they deployed around a wide circle and when they came together they were around a tree which showed marks of a fire on its bark about five feet high. At the foot of the tree there were ashes and burnt human bones. The leader said: "Here died a man"; and out of this incident there sprung a society which I think is something like the society of the Knights of Pythias. It was founded on the sentiments of loyalty and devotion to duty and to each other. The society increased in numbers and spread to other tribes. A member of the society had the misfortune of which Mr. Keefe spoke. He made a feast to his companions in the society. He said to his wife, "Boil meat." That meant to make a feast for his companions. He invited them in. The woman went to the spring for water. One of his companions slipped away from the tent and, out of her sight, saw her talking with another man, her lover, by the spring. Afterwards she came back with the water. Her husband knew that he could not hold his wife's affections. The companion came back and told what he had seen, that she had been talking with this other man, her lover. The feast went on, and they were all seated about. The husband arose at the feast--he had sent some of his companions out to get and bring in this other man that had been talking to his wife and he had come in. The husband then arose and sang this song: "I spoke to the woman but she would not hear, so I give her to you." These words are all there is to the song and it is still sung among the Omaha today. Then he took her blankets over and laid them at the feet of the other man, his wife's lover, as Mr. Keefe narrated to you. It was considered as a great deed of resignation and an act of bravery. It was several generations ago that this original incident occurred. So MANSHTINGA, who was a member |
of the Mandan society in the Omaha tribe, thought it would be a brave act to do the same thing, and at a feast which he made to his companions of the Mandan society he got up and sang this song. There was no cause for it, so she went to her father's lodge, and he had a much harder time wooing her back than he had to win her at first. We have cut the Indians off from the development of a civilization of their own in the beginning of their progress. If they had not been disturbed they would, of course--as we did, as the Chinese did, and as every other nation has done--have developed a civilization of their own along the line of resources and conditions of the country. We have developed our civilization under European conditions. We never can know what their civilization would have been. We do not know what shape it would have taken. They would have progressed; they were on the way. We are on the way, only a little farther along. They would have progressed to some form of civilization suited to their condition here. Of course, in time, there will be only one civilization over the whole world. |
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