Reformers and Indian Education

Reformers and Indian Education

Reformers did not believe that the Indian problem could be solved only by breaking up the reservation. Instead, education had to supplement sever- alty. After the breakup of the reservations, therefore, the education of Native American children was the chief interest of most “friends of the Indian” in the late nineteenth century. This section contains sources that reflect their concerns. As you examine them, note the reformers’ goals and methods. Also consider what these sources reveal about the reformers’ values—and what they thought about the Indians’ values.

7 The Reverend Lyman Abbott, one of the most committed Indian reformers, advanced a plan for a universal system of education for Indian children at the Lake Mohonk Conference in 1888. On what

grounds does Abbott argue that education must accompany severalty?

A Proposal for Indian Education (1888) The Indian problem is three problems—land, law, and education. The country has entered upon the solution of the land problem. It has resolved to break up the reservation system, allot to the Indians in severalty so much land as they can profitably occupy, purchase the rest at a fair valuation, throw it open to actual settlers, and consecrate the entire continent to civili- zation, with no black spot upon it devoted to barbarism. Upon that experi- ment the country has entered, and it will not turn back. The law problem, also, has been put in the way of solution. It is safe to assume that it will not be long before the existing courts are open to the Indians; and it is reason- able to hope that special courts will be provided for their special protec- tion, in accordance with the general plan outlined by the law committee of the Lake Mohonk Conference. But nothing has yet been done toward the solution of the educational problem. A great deal has been done toward the education of individual Indians, something, perhaps, toward the edu- cation of single tribes, but no plan has been agreed upon; and it is hardly too much to say that no plan has even been proposed for solving the edu- cational problem of the Indian race,—for converting them from groups of tramps, beggars, thieves, and sometimes robbers and murderers, into com- munities of intelligent, industrious, and self-supporting citizens. But this

Source: Francis Paul Prucha, ed., Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian,” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 208–210, 212; originally from Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian (1888).

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Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources64

is by far the most important problem of the three. Put an ignorant and imbruted savage on land of his own, and he remains a pauper, if he does not become a vagrant and a thief. Open to him the courts of justice, and make him amenable to the laws of the land, and give him neither knowl- edge nor a moral education, and he will come before those courts only as a criminal; but inspire in him the ambition of industry, and equip him with the capacity of self-support, and he will acquire in time the needful land and find a way to protect his personal rights. These reforms must move on together. Certain it is that without the legal and the educational reform the land reform will be death to the Indian, and burden, if not disaster, to the white race. My object in this paper is simply to set before the Lake Mohonk Conference the outlines of a possible educational system, in the hope that the principles here announced, and the methods here suggested, may at least be found worthy of discussion, out of which may be evolved a plan worthy to be presented to the country for its adoption.

At present we have no system of Indian education. Some Christian and philanthropic individuals and societies are attempting, in various fragmen- tary ways, to do a work of education in special localities. The Government is doing some educational work under teachers whom it has appointed and whom it supports; but the efficacy of these governmental efforts depends largely upon the ability and character of the agent of the reservation on which the school is situated. . . .

Nor is this the only vice of the present essentially vicious no-system of Indian education. A minority of Indian children are taught more or less feebly the rudiments of civilization, some in boarding schools, some in day schools, some on the reservation, some off it, some under one, others un- der another sectarian influence. When a little smattering of education has been given them, they drift back, or are sent back to the reservation, to forget what they have learned,—to take off the beaver and put on the feathers, to lay aside the hoe and take up the hatchet, and resume the war paint which they had washed from their faces at the schoolhouse door. That so many In- dians are able to resist the evil influences of their savage environments, and interpenetrate their tribe with any civilizing influences whatever, affords a singular testimony to the stability of character which goes along with a sat- urnine disposition. What the country should do, what the friends of Indian emancipation—rather let me say of justice, humanity, and equal rights— should do, is to substitute for this chaotic congeries of fragmentary efforts, a system which shall secure within a generation the education of all Indian children within the borders of the United States in the essentials of Ameri- can civilization. Certain propositions looking to this ultimate result I desire to put before the Lake Mohonk Conference for its discussion.

1. The United States Government must undertake to provide this education, not to supplement provision made by others. . . .

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Sources 65

2. The education thus to be afforded must not merely be offered as a gift; it must be imposed by superior authority as a requirement. In other words, the education of Indian children must be made compulsory. It is a great mistake to suppose that the red man is hungering for the white man’s culture, eager to take it if it is offered to him. The ignorant are never hungry for education, nor the vicious for morality, nor barbarism for civilization; educators have to create the appetite as well as to furnish the food. The right of Government to interfere between parent and child must indeed be exercised with the greatest caution; the parental right is the most sacred of all rights; but a barbaric father has no right to keep his child in barbarism, nor an ignorant father to keep his child in ignorance.

8 Soon after he was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1889, Thomas J. Morgan issued instructions to Indian agents in charge of res- ervation schools. What did he see as the main goal of Indian education?

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