Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

vented; and threatening, which is never carried out, is also used. The moral effect on the child cannot be good.

Indian children are much more amiable than white children. They do not quarrel so with each other. Perhaps from heredity, several families living in one long wigwam, they have learned to bear with each other's frailties and to keep the peace. The grown up people, also, I think, live much more peaceably with each other than white people. Indian children in a school are not nearly so troublesome to their teachers as white children, and they are much more easily controlled.

MECHANICAL INGENUITY AND SKILL.

A

Does the Ojibway have any mechanical ingenuity? great deal more than we give them credit for. In fact, they seem to be able to make anything they want to make. One of our Indian clergymen makes a cutter or sleigh that is good and serviceable, although he never had any instruction. A mixed-blood young man at White Earth was with his mother, when her wagon wheel broke. He took his ax, went into the woods, and made a new wheel that answered the purpose. Since that time he has established himself as a regular wheelwright, and seems to be able to do that work perfectly well. Yet he never had a day's instruction. To another Indian young man I lately intrusted the building of a frame parsonage. He had built only one little board shanty before, and had had no training or experience excepting that. Yet he built the two-story parsonage, costing about $500, very well, and it looks well. They undoubtedly have a great deal of mechanical ingenuity, if they wish to exert it. One of these Indians made a fiddle.

The women, too, make most beautiful patterns in their bead work, which is often marvelous. Lately some of them have been taught lace-making, and the beautiful lace they turn out astonishes white experts. A highly educated young white lady, a teacher of lace-making, told me that she spent two weeks learning a certain lace-stitch, and then took as a pupil an Indian girl with no previous training in this work, who learned it in half an hour, and could do it better than she. The Indian children also model in clay very beautiful figures.

It is a pity that their undoubted genius cannot be made to benefit the world. Usually from indifference and lack of desire to apply it, unless called out by some necessity, it is never used. But it is there in high degree, and it has already permanently enriched our civilization in giving us the birch bark canoe, the moccasin, and many other things that might be mentioned, which, for beauty and perfect adaptation to the purposes intended, cannot be surpassed.

INTELLECTUAL TRAITS; COMPARISON WITH THE WHITE RACE.

This leads me to remark that in my opinion the intellectuality of the race is very high. I think it surpasses that of our own race, though, from circmstances, not being called out, it is not used nor known. But let any one listen to them discussing anything that is propounded to them concerning their own affairs, and he will be surprised to note how they look at it in every light, discussing it from points of view that he never would have thought of, and to observe how strong and original their minds are. I think no lawyer can equal an Indian, who yet does not know a letter, in making a skillful and telling presentation of his case, in marshaling his arguments effectively, and in concealing the weak points. And yet, with all their intellectuality, in another point of view they are sometimes grown up children.

The Indian is a highly educated man, although this may sound absurd to those who hear me. Said an Oxford graduate, then an inmate of my family, who often sat with Indians at meals, "These men seem to me like highly educated men; the lines of their faces seem like the lines of the faces of highly educated men." And I think it is true, that, though in a different way from us, the Indian is so. In everything that is needed for his life, or related to it, and even beyond it, he is so. The open page of nature, all about plants and animals, about life, a thousand things that are unknown to us, he knows perfectly. His faculties are far more highly trained than ours; his perceptions are far more keen. He will see fish in the water, animals on land, the glance of a deer's eye behind a bush, or his ear sticking up, where a white man cannot see anything. Canoeing with Indians, one will constantly hear them pointing out fish, numbers of them, naming them as bass,

pike, etc.; but the white man can see nothing. So even when going along in the cars, they will see many deer or other animals where no one else can see anything.

In one respect the Indian is remarkable. He is such a reader of character. There is no use in trying to deceive him. He seems to look right through a person, and "sizes him up,” as the phrase goes, much more accurately than we can. They are very accurate judges of a person's social standing.

What does the Indian think of the white man? We show them our electric lights and our other wonders, and think they will fall down and worship us as superior beings. It is not so. The Indian, it is true, sees his white brother do many wonderful things. But put the white man in his circumstances, and he is a miserably helpless creature, far inferior to the Indian. He does not know how to make a camp, how to protect himself from the cold, how to find the game. Put ån Indian and a white man into the woods; the white man can see nothing and will starve to death, the Indian can find a good living. In the Indian's country and in his circumstances, the white man needs the constant help of his red brother to keep him alive. No Indian has been drowned on the great lakes of Minnesota, as Leech, Cass and Winnibigoshish, within the memory of man, unless he was loaded with whisky; the white men have just settled about those lakes, and already considerable numbers of them have been drowned. In brief, the Indian sees that he is just as superior in his sphere as the white man is in his.

The Indian has a far higher opinion of himself than the white man of himself. "Do you not know," said one of our Indian clergymen to me, "that the Indian thinks his body God?" That translated into our idiom means that he has a very high idea of his own personality. Consequently the one who treats him with very great respect is the one who gains his esteem and love.

It is strange also that with the Indian amiability is the test by which he judges. One of themselves may do anything, no matter how outrageously bad, even according to their own standard, and he will not lose caste in the least. He will associate with the others precisely as before, without a thought on his part, or on theirs, of there being any difference. But

if he loses his temper, or, as we say, "gets mad," he has utterly fallen in the Indian's estimation. To lose control of one's self, to get in a passion, to scold, is with the Indian the unpardonable sin. I cannot remember ever to have seen an Ojibway in a passion.

The Ojibways have certainly many strong points. Their speech is clean. I can hear more bad language among my own people in half an hour than I have heard among the Ojibways in over twenty-four years. They never swear, and I have heard very little obscene language. Once at Sandy Lake I did hear such language; almost every word was foul, but I saw that they were only imitating some of the scum of the frontier, whom they had met, and that they thought it was smart. That is saying a great deal for them, cleanness of speech.

Also they are far more honest than the whites. I have inquired everywhere among the lumbermen, for hundreds of miles, and the testimony is always the same, namely, that where the Indians are they can leave things lying about and nothing is taken, but when the whites come there is a sad change. From Bemidji, through by Pokegama lake to Mille Lacs, the testimony is always the same. They have also more respect for the law, and more fear of the law, when they know a thing to be law, than the whites have.

Among the poor Ojibways life and property are absolutely safe. There has been no instance of any man or woman having robbed or "held up" another, red or white, in a quarter of a century. They would never think of such a thing, and it makes no difference how much money a man may be known to have on him, he is perfectly safe. A helpless woman or child might go from end to end of their country by day or night, and would never be molested. Among the Indians one has the feeling of absolute security in person and property. During twenty-four years I have never carried a gun or pistol when traveling among them, and that was almost constantly, in a circuit of about 300 miles, except once for fear of wolves; and never have I had firearms in my house except once, when some white tramps were reported to be meditating an attack, of whom the Indians also were mortally afraid. My family and I never received anything but kindness from the Indians,

and never felt one moment's apprehension. Once we were gone for three months, and the house, untenanted, and filled with things they needed, stood by the roadside. When we came back it was untouched. All of us, when among the whites, at certain times and in certain places, fear and are on our guard; when we want absolute security, we go among the poor Ojibways.

The Indian is extremely suspicious; he hardly ever gives his confidence to any man, especially a white man. For instance, let him have known a white man ever so long, and have always found him perfectly upright, and his friend; yet if that white man proposes something new to him, he will never take it on trust, nor think, "Here is this man who is wiser than I, and he proposes this thing for my good; therefore I will accept it." Instead he will view it with suspicion and think that it is some plan to injure him, and will examine it with that thought constantly in his mind. He views everything with suspicion. He is the least trustful, and the most suspicious of ill, of all beings.

[ocr errors]

I have never met an Indian who did not believe in the existence of deities and the life beyond the grave. I do not believe such a one can be found, or that there ever was such an Indian. It is a part of the warp and woof of their thought. At the same time their belief in a future life does not seem to have any influence on their conduct here; nor do they seem to have any fear of retribution beyond the grave.

MURDER RARE, EXCEPTING WHEN DUE TO INTOXICATION.

I cannot recall any murders by Ojibways of their fellow Indians, when not intoxicated, except that one man, a mixedblood, killed a woman who rejected his improper proposals; and that another mixed-blood killed his wife and an Indian, who, aided by this second wife, had killed his first or real wife. Also at Red Lake a man was shot by another, whether accidentally or not was never determined.

One or two white persons have been killed in collisions with the Indians within the past twenty-five years; but not so many as there have been Indians killed by whites.

Until about twenty-five years ago, great numbers of Indians were killed by each other in drunken fights. Our aged

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »