1873, and General Ewing, on the 19th of March of that year, addressed a
letter to the Secretary of the Interior, submitting “that, under the
Indian policy of President Grant, this agency should be assigned to the
Catholic Church.” He accompanied his letter with a brief of the facts on
which he thus claimed the agency for the church. The Chippewas number
4,551, and 3,696 of them wear citizen’s dress; they have six schools and
three churches. More than 200 years ago the Catholic fathers Dablon and
Marquette established the mission of St. Mary among the Chippewas, and
the church has ever since looked upon them as her children. The Catholic
missions, first permanently established among them in 1668, continued in
a flourishing manner until the year 1800; they were revived after a
lapse of 30 years; and for the past 47 years they have been continuously
attended by Catholic priests—one being assigned exclusively and
continuously to the religious instruction, education, and care of the
Indians. The Indians at their own expense have built three Catholic
churches, at Bayfield, La Pointe, and Bad River. The successive reports
of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs from 1868 to 1872 set forth these
facts. Praise is given in 1868 to Father Chebal for the good result of
his labors; the agent, writing in 1870, says: “The religious instruction
has been almost entirely under Catholic missionaries; 99 out of 100 of
them are Catholics, and Father Chebal has labored industriously and
successfully among them.” The agent, writing in 1871, again says: “Most
of these people are members of the Roman Catholic Church. Their pastor
has been a missionary among them for many years, and has labored with
the zeal for which his church is proverbial to secure converts. He has
accomplished much good.” The report of the agent for 1868 likewise
mentions that the “Rev. L. H. Wheeler and his most estimable lady” had
been conducting a Protestant mission there “under the control of the A.
B. C. F. M. Society,” but that “_this society having almost withdrawn
their support, and further for the purpose of educating their own
children, Rev. Mr. Wheeler has abandoned his mission_.” The agent in
1869, Lt.-Col. Knight, of the army, thus writes:
“The Chippewas of Lake Superior generally have abandoned the
heathen faith of their fathers. If they have not all been made
intelligent Christians, they have abandoned heathenism. The
Catholic missionaries are the most assiduous workers among them,
and the largest portion of them have espoused that religious
faith; yet the Protestant religion has its adherents among them.
Father Chebal, of the Catholic faith, is untiring and devoted in
his labors with them. The Protestant religion is without a
missionary representative, which is unfortunate,” etc.
The case, it will be seen, was plain. The Catholic missions were shown
to be the oldest and the _only successful_ missions among the Chippewas,
and “the right of the Catholic Church, under the policy of the
administration, to the agency” was incontestable. But the agency had
already been given to the Congregationalists, who had never before
attempted to establish a mission among the Chippewas, and whose minister
knew nothing about the tribe. Pressed hard by General Ewing, the
secretary referred the matter to our pious friend Mr. Brunot, who, in an
elaborate and most disingenuous opinion, decided that, although the
assignment of the agency to the Congregationalists might have been
erroneous, now that it was made it ought not to be changed—and this,
too, although the department had made similar changes in other
instances, taking, for example, the Nez-Percés agency from the
Catholics, to whom it had been assigned, and giving it to the Methodists
in 1870. General Ewing, unwilling to submit to this palpable injustice,
again addressed the Secretary of the Interior, reviewing the whole
question and incontestably proving the justice of his claim. But all was
in vain; the agency remains in the hands of the Congregationalists, and
the Catholic Chippewas and their priests are at the mercy of men who
have no sympathy or bond of common feeling with either.
The Osages, now in the Indian Territory, are and long have been almost
wholly Catholic. But they were assigned to the Quakers, and good Friend
Gibson, whose pathetic lament over the worldly sufferings of his
_protegés_ we have already given, had not been long in charge of them
ere he issued an edict forbidding Catholic priests or teachers to remain
on the reservation. Accustomed to oppression and maltreatment of every
kind, the Indians felt that this last blow was too hard to bear without
remonstrance, and in June, 1873, they drew up and signed a memorial to
the President, asking that “their former Catholic missionaries and
school-teachers be restored to them and allowed to again locate in the
Osage nation.” No response was given to this petition, and on the 31st
of March in the next year a delegation of the tribe, with the governor
of the nation at their head, arrived at Washington, and, without
assistance or suggestions, drew up and presented to the Assistant
Secretary of the Interior a memorial which it is impossible to read
without emotion. After setting forth that the signers of the memorial
are “the governor, chiefs, and councillors of the Great and Little Osage
nation of Indians, and all duly-constituted delegates of said nations,”
they recount the story of their former petition, and say:
“... In the name of our people, therefore, we beg leave to renew
our said petition, and to ask that our former Catholic
missionary, Father Shoemaker, and those connected with him in
his missionary and educational labors among our people previous
to the late war, be permitted to again locate among us. We think
that this request is reasonable and just. Catholic missionaries
have been among our people for several generations. Our people
are familiar with their religion. The great majority of them are
of the Catholic faith, and believe it is right. Our children
have grown up in this faith. Many of our people have been
educated by the Catholic missionaries, and our people are
indebted to them for all the blessings of Christianity and
civilization that they now enjoy, and have for them a grateful
remembrance. Since the missionaries have been taken away from
us, we have done but little good and have made poor advancement
in civilization and education. Our whole nation has grieved ever
since these missionaries have been taken away from us, and we
have prayed continuously that the Great Spirit might move upon
the heart of our great father, the President, and cause him to
return these missionaries to us. We trust he will do so, because
in 1865, when we signed the treaty of that date, the
commissioners who made it promised _that if we signed it we
should again have our missionaries_.”
The assistant secretary received the memorial, promising to present it
to the President at once and to obtain for the delegation a reply: but
on the next day Mr. Gibson, who had followed them to Washington in a
state of great alarm, hurried them away from the capital to
Philadelphia, and thence homewards, not permitting them to return.
Immediately after their departure the petition they had filed in the
department was missing, and its loss was only supplied by General Ewing,
who had a printed copy with the certificate of the secretary placed on
file. Simultaneously with the mysterious disappearance of this petition
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs received a paper purporting to come
from the Osages at home. We dislike to use the phrase, but the proof is
clear that this document was a forgery. It purported to be signed by
twenty-eight chiefs and braves, with their “mark”; but, as General Ewing
says, “it was evidently got up by interested white men and the names of
the Indians signed without their knowledge.” The substance of it was
that the delegation which had gone to Washington was not to be regarded.
Upon their return home the delegation met their people in council, and
the result of this conference is related in a letter to General Ewing,
signed by Joseph Paw-ne-no-posh, governor of the nation; Alexander
Bezett, president of the council; T. L. Rogers, secretary; and the
eighteen councillors. The letter is too long to be given here. In
presenting it to the Secretary of the Interior, with a full account of
the whole transaction, General Ewing used some very strong, but not too
strong, language. “Their petitions,” said he, “have not been heard, and
now, through me as the representative of the Catholic Indian missions,
they make a final appeal. The petition of a defenceless people for
simple justice at the hands of a great government is the strongest
appeal that my head or heart can conceive; and it is of course
unnecessary for me to urge it upon you. It is as plain and open as the
day; and if you can decline (which I cannot believe) to comply with the
repeated petitions of this people, it is useless for me to urge you to
it. You must give this agency to the Catholic Church, or you publish the
announcement that President Grant has changed his policy, and that he
now intends to _force_ that form of Christianity on each Indian tribe
that _he_ may think is best for each.”
But it was all in vain. Friend Gibson carried his point, and, although
he has since been compelled to retire from the agency, it is still in
the hands of the Quaker organization. The population of the reservation,
according to the last report, was 2,679; very nearly the whole of these
are good and faithful Catholic Christians; but the agent reports:
“Church members, none; churches, none; missionaries, none!” The Quakers
have driven away the Catholic priests, and have not even taken the
trouble to send a missionary of their own to fill their place.
But we must make an end, although we have only, as it were, touched the
skirt of our subject. Time and space would fail us to tell of the priest
in California who was thrown into prison, brutally beaten, and expelled
from his flock, for the offence of coming to his old mission after the
agency had been assigned to a Protestant sect; of the bishops who have
been denied permission to build churches and schools on reservations for
the use of Catholic Indians; of the frauds committed by Protestant
agents on Catholic tribes; of the mingled tyranny and temptation with
which the Protestant agents have repeatedly assailed our poor Indian
brethren, making their apostasy the condition of their rescue from
starvation. Are not all these things written in the reports of the
Indian Bureau, in the annals of the Catholic Indian missions, and in the
letters of our bishops and priests published from time to time?
The duty of the Catholic laity throughout the United States in this
business is clear. Happily, the way for the discharge of this duty has
been made easy. It is simply to provide generously for the support and
increase of the work of the Bureau of Catholic Missions at Washington.
This bureau was established in January, 1873; it is composed of a
commissioner, appointed by the Archbishop of Baltimore, with the
concurrence in council of the archbishops of the United States; a
treasurer and director; and a Board of Control, of five members,
appointed in like manner. The commissioner is a layman; he is recognized
by the government as the representative of the church in all matters
among the Indians. The treasurer and director must be a priest; the
president of the Board of Control must be a priest; the other four
members are laymen. The salaries of the commissioner and of the Board of
Control are—nothing. Their work, like that of the directors in the
councils of the Propaganda, is given in charity. “General Charles Ewing,
the commissioner,” says Father Brouillet, “has for over four years
generously given to the work of the bureau his legal services and a
large portion of his valuable time gratuitously. He never made any
charge nor received any pay for his services, and on more than one
occasion he has advanced his own money to keep up the work.” The
director and treasurer and two clerks are the only persons connected
with the bureau who are paid, and their united salaries are only $1,000
a year. The whole expenditures of the bureau, for salaries, printing,
stationery, postage, rent, and travelling, have not exceeded $1,600 a
year during the four years of its existence—all the balance of its funds
going directly to the benefit of the missions. The business of the
bureau is to defend Catholic Indian missions against the organized
assault which has been made upon them. For those desirous of aiding so
good a work we add the information that “all remittances to the
treasurer of the Catholic Indian mission fund should be by draft on New
York or by post-office order, and should be addressed to lock-box 60,
Washington, D. C.”
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ST. HEDWIGE.[11]
The bulwark of Christendom is the title which Poland long claimed and
well deserved, even when the country now known as that of Sobieski and
Kosciusko was itself half-barbarous, and, instead of being a brilliant,
many-provinced kingdom, was a disunited confederation of sovereigns.
Among the many mediæval heroes who fought the invading Tartars on the
east, and the aggressive heathen Prussians on the west, and looked upon
their victories as triumphs of the cross and their death as a kind of
martyrdom, were two Henrys, “the Bearded” and “the Pious,” the husband
and the son of the holy Princess Hedwige, Duchess of Silesia and Poland
during the first half of the thirteenth century. Her life, chiefly
through her connection with other princely houses, was an eventful and
sorrowful one, and, towards the last years of it, personally a checkered
one. If God chastises those whom he loves, the mark of grace was surely
set upon St. Hedwige of Andechs, the aunt of St. Elizabeth of Hungary,
and second daughter of a Bavarian sovereign whose titles and possessions
included parts of Istria, Croatia and Dalmatia, Swabia, and the Tyrol.
The life and customs of the thirteenth century, the magnificence on
state occasions, and the simplicity, not to say rudeness, of domestic
life at ordinary times; the difficulty of communication, and
consequently the long separations between friends and kindred; the
prominent part of religion in all the good works and public improvements
of the day; the tales and legends that grew up among the people; the
traditions which there was no one to investigate or contradict, and
which did duty then for newspaper and magazine gossip; the personal
connection between the sovereign and his people, and the primitive ideal
of charity unclouded by doubts and theories, experiments and
“commissions”; the summary processes of justice, tempered only by the
pleadings of generous and tender women; government in a chaotic state,
the profession of arms the dominant one, private wars at every turn, and
individual acts of heroism, barbarity, and charity all alike received as
a matter of course—all this is well known, and is equally true of all
Christian and civilized lands of that day.
But as you went eastward through Europe confusion increased and manners
grew rougher; primitive standards of right and wrong existed under the
name of the law of the strongest; and whatever generosity human nature
displayed was an untutored impulse, a half-heathen quality guided by a
natural sense of honor rather than by fixed rules of morality. The
Slavs, the Czechs, and the Magyars were magnificent barbarians, as the
Franks and Teutons of four centuries earlier had been—Christians,
indeed, and as fiercely so as Clovis when he drew his sword at the first
recital of the Passion and exclaimed, “Would to God I and my Franks had
been there”; but unrestrained and wild, more generous than obedient
towards the church, which they would rather endow and defend than curb
their passions in accordance with its teachings—splendid material, but
an unwrought mine. Bishops and priests had fallen into loose ways among
them and lost the respect of the people; vassals of the great lords,
they stood on much the same level as the secular clergy at present do in
Russia, and the popes had long striven in vain to make them give up
marriage when they took Holy Orders. The parish clergy were mostly
ignorant men, often employed in common labor to support their families,
while of teaching monasteries or any places where learning was imparted
and respected there were very few.
Hedwige came from a well-regulated country, where church dignitaries
were the equals of civil ones, where the Roman standard was paramount,
and churchmen were looked upon as powerful and learned men. Monasteries
for both sexes abounded; Hedwige herself had been brought up by the
Benedictines at Kitzingen, where her special friend and teacher,
Petrussa, many years afterwards, followed her into Silesia and became
the first abbess of the monastery of Trebnitz, near Breslau. Hedwige,
whose mind was from her earliest years in advance of her time, and who
mastered all the accomplishments of a woman of high station at that day
before she was twelve years old, set herself the task of bettering her
adopted country as soon as she had entered it. The men of that time knew
less than the women; for their education, unless they were destined for
the church, was purely military. Ecclesiastics were lawyers, doctors,
authors, travellers, _savants_, poets, and schoolmasters; while the
majority of laymen were only soldiers. But the women of corresponding
birth were taught Latin and a good deal of medicine, besides household
knowledge, embroidery, the national literature, music, and painting. For
the times this was no unworthy curriculum. They had a practical
knowledge of surgery and of the healing herbs of the field—which, in
days when the chances of life and death often hung on the possibility of
reaching or finding a physician within the radius of forty or fifty
miles, was a very valuable gift—and an equally practical and useful
acquaintance with all the details of housekeeping. Nothing in those days
was “made easy”; mechanical contrivances for saving time and trouble
were not thought of; and even the highest people worked slowly with
their hands and did cheerfully without the luxuries which a cottage
would scarcely lack in these days. Hedwige in her later years—for she
never gave up her habits of industry—often reminded her attendants of
the maxim, “He that worketh not, neither let him eat,” and would never
allow that the rule did not apply to sovereigns as well as to private
individuals. Her own life was laborious; she rose with the dawn, winter
and summer, and, though her devotions took up many hours, she yet had
enough to give to the education of her children, the making of vestments
for poor churches, and of clothes for her pensioners. Her virtues, which
were great and generous, flowed naturally into the mould of her time;
she built and endowed monasteries, interceded for prisoners and
criminals, made daily distributions of alms to the poor, nursed the sick
and leprous in the hospitals—which she was the first in her adopted
country to found and secure—and she brought up a number of orphan
children. Of these she was so fond that when she travelled she took them
with her in several covered wagons. Later on she kept in the palace at
Breslau, at her own expense, thirteen poor men, whom she served every
day at dinner, just before her own meal, and otherwise ministered to
their wants in memory of our Lord and his apostles. In fact, her life is
a kind of transcript of that of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and even the
poetical legends of miracles wrought to turn away her husband’s
displeasure, familiar to us all through the pictures of St. Elizabeth
and the bread turned to roses, have a counterpart in Hedwige’s life.
There is a prevalent idea that holiness and the present time are
incompatible, or rather that the holiness of which the biographers of
mediæval saints admiringly tell us is out of place in this century. The
mistake lies in the frame of the picture presented to us. Holiness is of
all times, and is the same in substance as it ever was. If, instead of
reproducing the beautiful legends of old, and restoring a sort of
literary Preraphaelitism in the history of the strong and wise women of
by-gone times, the modern biographer were to go to the root of the
matter and bring out in strong relief the commonsense virtues, the
simplicity and faithfulness to natural duties, the reliance upon God,
and the single-minded purpose which distinguished the women who are
known as saints, they would succeed in winning the interest of modern
readers. These saints were wives, mothers, and mistresses, lived and
loved, sorrowed, rejoiced, and suffered, as women have done from the
wives of the patriarchs down to the good women of our own century,
perhaps of our own acquaintance. They were models whom it is
praiseworthy to copy—not pictures held up to our gaze as beautiful
inaccessibilities. The very rudeness of life then should make them more
human in our eyes; they made mistakes with good intentions; they had
predilections which savored of weakness; they struggled through
temptations to final perfection—for saintship implies, not the
glorification of every act they ever did, but the general state of their
life and soul after they had suffered and conquered in the fight that we
all have to wage with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Of the
striking incidents of a saint’s life it is best to judge as one would of
those in the life of any other personage of by-gone ages—that is,
according to the standard of the age in which he or she lived; of the
root-virtues which won the saint’s canonization: by the everlasting
standard of the Ten Commandments. There is no more mischievous error,
nor one more likely to blind us to the good we can draw from the lives
of men and women who have gone before us, than the view which sets a
barrier between historic holiness and every-day life at the present day.
Hedwige lived in times which had their share of wars, invasions,
pestilences, and other such stirring events: Poland and Germany were in
a stormy state, and the fate of many of her own family was peculiarly
stormy; indeed, hardly a sensational drama of our day could deal in more
violent incidents than did the half century through which she lived. Her
sister Agnes became the wife of Philip, King of France, in place of his
lawful but divorced wife, Ingeburga, and incurred not only personal
excommunication as an adulteress, but was the cause of the French
kingdom being laid under an interdict for more than a year. Her elder
sister Gertrude, Queen of Hungary, was assassinated by a political
faction in the absence of her husband, who had left her regent. Her two
brothers, Henry and Egbert (the latter Bishop of Bamberg), were the
accomplices of Otho of Wittelsbach, the suitor of Hedwige’s only
daughter, in the murder of Philip, the Emperor of Germany, whom he slew
to revenge himself for the warning the emperor had given the Duke of
Silesia against the would-be suitor of the young princess; for Otho was
as cruel as he was brave. For this deed the Electors at Frankfort
degraded the brothers from their dignities, titles, and possessions,
after which Henry exiled himself to the Holy Land, where he fought the
Saracens for twenty years, and Egbert fled to Hungary, where the queen,
his sister, gave him a home and shelter for the rest of his life. Otho
was beheaded, his head thrown into the Danube and his body exposed to
the birds and beasts of the forest.