superstition of the natives is not the least. There is, however,
a project full of promise for reaching this country. By recent
surveys it has been ascertained that opposite the Canary Islands,
in latitude 28° north, running five hundred miles south-east in
the Great Desert, there is a sink two hundred feet below the
level of the Atlantic, extending to within one hundred miles
of Timbuctoo, the great city of Central Africa. This sink or
depression has a width of one hundred and twenty miles, and
contains sixty thousand square miles of land. Explorers agree
that a channel once connected its north-western extremity
with the Atlantic, where it terminated in a sand-bank, which
prevented the waters of the ocean from flowing into its bed. Its
mouth is formed between perpendicular rocks, and measures about
two and a half miles in width, and is blocked by a sand-bar,
three hundred yards across, with a height of thirty feet above
the sea. All that is needed is to excavate a ship canal three
hundred yards long through the sand-bar, and the inland sea will
be speedily formed. When this is accomplished the Mendi country
and its neighborhood will be a vast island, approachable from
many directions, and a belt of civilization will be closed in
until the whole area is blessed with peace and abundance. Then
“Afric’s sunny fountains” will “roll down their golden sands”
into the lap of the older civilizations, and receive in return
the riper and richer results of the heaven-born blessings of the
Gospel.
(5.) It is fitting, furthermore, that we consider the character
and condition of the people of this domain. As to their physical
proportions, we have reason to believe that back of the malarial
belt they are well formed, muscular and endowed with powers
of great endurance. The tribes of the interior drive down the
inhabitants of the forest range into the lowland, where the law
of the survival of the unfittest obtains on account of malaria
leaving alive the coarse, muscular men of the coast. Of the
mental capacity of these people a good illustration was seen
in Barnabas Root, a real heathen, who came to this country and
was graduated at a Western college and also at the Chicago
Theological Seminary, ranking among the best scholars of his
class at both institutions.
The capacity of this people is also indicated by some splendid
achievements on African soil. A native among the Vey people
invented an alphabet with two hundred characters, in which
communications could be sent by letter and the language preserved
in books. Still another contrived an instrument before the
invention of the telegraph, called an _eleimbic_, for conveying
sound, and by means of which messages could be sent for several
miles. Native women manufacture cloth, woven in different colors;
they also make a species of twine as delicate and useful as
any in the world. Clay vessels that hold water, iron axes and
implements of utility of native manufacture, also abound.
Timbuctoo, the queen city of the Desert, at the north-eastern
boundary of the country we are considering, contains 20,000
inhabitants, and is laid out with regular streets and well-built
houses. Here is found a great mosque with nine naves and a tower
286 feet high and 212 wide, while other mosques of great age
and importance greet the eyes in this wonderful city. These
indications of skill are found among native Africans, even if
due, especially in Timbuctoo, to the Mohammedan faith. Cities and
towns in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and further along the coast, are
the result in part of a foreign civilization, but still in some
measure attest the capacity of the real heathen.
These people not only evince capacity for the development
of material wealth, but for the science of government. They
evidently believe in experiments in governmental civilization.
For example, the king of Dahomey selects the most robust of his
wives for a body-guard and organizes regiments of amazons. These
are said to be most courageous soldiers and absolutely devoted
to their calling. He also displays his appreciation of object
lessons in temperance reform by keeping a drunkard on rum, that
his hideous aspect might deter the people from that vice; while
the boys who act as porters on the coast promote the observance
of Sunday laws by charging for their services on the Lord’s day
sixpence extra for breaking the Sabbath.
The question, however, with which we have chief concern relates
to the religious instincts or capabilities of these people.
These may be measured in some degree by the sacrifices they make
and by the notions they entertain. For example, among the Foula
tribe the offerings to the Fetish must be made by a “sinless
girl.” Among the Mendi, they believe in a supreme being who made
all things, who punishes those who wrong their friends; they
thank him for blessings, and blame him for trouble and sickness.
The fetishism of the African is based upon religious instincts,
and indicates the strength of his aptitude for faith, prayer and
self-denial.
We have not at command any comprehensive knowledge of the habits
of all the tribes of the Mendi country and its neighborhood.
We are able, however, to give some account of the unprejudiced
conduct of the Ashantees during a four years’ war, as observed
by two German missionaries held as prisoners at Coomassie for
that length of time. They narrate a condition of heathendom that
ought to inspire us to pray and labor for the enlightenment and
redemption of this wretched people.
The worst phase of their condition is exhibited in the practice
of offering human sacrifices. We are told that when the king
visits the burial-place of his ancestors he offers a human
sacrifice on approaching the skeleton of each one, and in this
manner some thirty persons are slaughtered. When about to repair
a roof at the burial-place after a storm, as many more victims
are offered to appease the wrath of the departed. On funeral
occasions many villagers are killed, till it pleases the king to
forbid the further shedding of blood. The arms of poor wretches
are cut off in midday, while they are compelled to dance for the
amusement of the king before being taken to execution. If the
victims will not dance, lighted torches are applied to their
wounds until the drums beat, and then their heads are taken off.
During the Ashantee war 136 chiefs were slain. According to the
belief of the people it was necessary to send a considerable
retinue after them to the other world. For this reason a
ceremony called a “death-wake” was instituted, at which, for
each Coomassie chief, 30 of their people were killed. If an
equal retinue was assigned for chiefs in other localities, the
slaughtered persons would number 4,080 souls. At the funeral
festivities of Kokofu more than 200 human beings were sacrificed,
the king beheading several with his own hand. On the death of
a prince many of his wives are slain, and if the number he
possessed is not deemed sufficient, the king adds a selection
of girls, who are painted white and hung with golden ornaments.
These sit about the coffin for days, but are finally doomed
to the grave as attendants for the departed. The apology for
such practices is given by the king of Dahomey in the following
language: “If I were to give up this custom at once, my head
would be taken off to-morrow. These things cannot be stopped,
as one might suppose. By and by, little by little, much may be
done. Softly, softly; not by threats. You see how I am placed.”
A missionary of much experience on the coast tells us: “The
practice of offering human sacrifices is founded on a purely
religious basis, designed as a manifestation of piety, sanctioned
by long usages, upheld by a powerful priesthood, and believed to
be essential to the very existence of the tribes where it exists.”
But, thank God, over these dark areas of Pagan land we believe
the “morning light is breaking.” Already about the Mendi country
and its neighborhood there are twenty-three central mission
stations, many, if not all of which are circled with tributary
“out-stations,” lighting the country like a galaxy of planets and
stars and suns. Here different religious societies have organized
more than one hundred churches, and one hundred times as many
converts, and gathered 20,000 children in its schools. To this it
must be added that nearly a score of dialects have been mastered,
and portions of the Scriptures printed in as many tongues; while
millions of real heathen have felt the blessed influence of the
Gospel. As you will see by the map, there is a belt of missions
from the Senegal on the north along the coast to the mouth of
the Niger, and up the Niger the native black Bishop Crowther has
located nine mission stations, manned by converted heathen, who
are pushing northward toward Timbuctoo, with their steamers and
other facilities for extending the work.
We, of the American Missionary Association, are in the heart
of this great domain. The Mendi tribe is supposed to occupy a
region hundreds of miles inland, and to number two millions of
souls. The work of our missionaries on that ground is fruitful
of suggestions and encouragement. The faith and aspirations of
all, I believe, was expressed by Mr. Anthony, a colored hero from
Berea, Ky., in his letter to New York: “If you had the money I
would say, send 100,000 missionaries to Africa at once.” The
Freedmen are rapidly fitting themselves to go up and possess this
land for Christ. Give us the money and we will send them forward.
At some of the fashionable watering-places by the shores of the
sea, during the past summer, you noticed chains of electric
lights illuminating the fairy-like towers and palaces and
abodes of ten thousand pleasure-seekers, who, amid music and
gayety and song, sported in the tide as it broke in billowy
grandeur on the snowy sands; darkness was changed to day, and
night abolished by the wonderful discovery of Mr. Edison. So, I
think, our missionary stations in Western Africa are electric
lights, dispelling the darkness and ushering in that light which
is the truth and the way. Mr. Edison maintains his luminaries
by batteries with positive and negative poles, two extremes
operating one over against the other. Not otherwise is it with
the lights of the missionary world. They must be supported by the
great batteries of prayer and sacrifice. Praying and giving must
be our watchword. Pray the Lord of the harvest that He send forth
the laborer into His harvest, and remember the words of the Lord
Jesus, how He said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
* * * * *
THE INDIANS.
* * * * *
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
Your committee, to whom has been referred that part of the report
of the Executive Committee which concerns the American Indians,
beg leave to report as follows:
Another event has occurred, in what may surely be termed the
providence of God, to compel the attention of Christians to the
condition of the Indians, and to our methods of dealing with them.
Whatever may be said of the policy of the Government, the fact
is that the paroxysm into which the country is thrown at each
new Indian outbreak, the perplexed uncertainty which is then
manifested by our chief public officers, the conflict of orders
which issue from the different departments of the Government, the
passionate demands which are then made for radical changes in our
policy, and the general hopelessness of permanent improvement
in the condition of the Indian which that wide-spread demand
indicates—these conspire to prove that, if not a fundamental
change, at least a more intelligent aim is necessary in our
method of dealing with these, the most perplexing of our national
wards.
In the hope of furnishing a basis of discussion, and of guiding
the efforts of the Association in the new problems which are
arising, your committee venture to embody their suggestions
in the form of a series of resolutions, which we present for
adoption, if your wisdom approves them.
_Resolved_, That the aim of this Association shall be, as far as
possible and as rapidly as possible, to secure for the Indians—
1. A legalized standing in the Courts of the United States.
2. Ownership of land in severalty.
3. The full rights of American citizenship.
These three things, we believe, are essential if the Indian is to
be, not Christianized or civilized, but saved from extermination.
_Resolved_, That this Association most heartily indorses the plan
of the Indian Bureau to secure to as many Indians as possible
the advantages of education offered at such distant schools
as those at Hampton and Carlisle; at the same time we believe
that the system of boarding schools on the reservations, which
for many years have been maintained by the Government and the
missionaries, is the chief educational agency that must be relied
upon for bettering the condition of the Indian.
_Resolved_, That to this end the members of this Association will
do all in their power to make the Indian question a pressing
question until the attention of Congress is so secured and held
to it that the legislative enactment necessary to bring about
these changes be completely accomplished.
H. A. STIMSON,
A. F. SHERRILL,
S. R. RIGGS
WM. CRAWFORD,
M. B. WILDER,
JOSEPH HART,
E. P. SMITH.
* * * * *
THE INDIAN QUESTION.
REV. H. A. STIMSON, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
I stand before you to speak upon the Indian question with an
inexpressible sadness. The hopelessness of securing justice or
mercy for the Indian oppresses me. I seem to hear the cry of the
Pilgrim’s saintly pastor, when the news came to him across the
ocean of their first fight with the natives of New England, “I
would that you had converted some before you killed any.” Our
injustice and oppression of the Indian are not the slow growth of
years, as they have been to-day shown to be in the case of the
negro; they sprang into being full armed, bitter and destructive,
like the spirits from Pandora’s box. As early as 1675 the devoted
John Eliot wrote to Gov. Winthrop from the wigwams in which he
was consecrating his culture and his life to their conversion:
“I humbly request that one effect of this trouble may be to
humble the English to do the Indians justice.” (Letter to Hon.
Mr. Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut. Roxbury, this 24th of the
fifth month, 1675.) The prayer has remained unanswered through
the centuries.
I am oppressed with the necessity of arraigning my Government and
my country of crime. It is but a short time since England was
horrified with the account of the barbarous atrocities committed
by an English governor upon the blacks of Jamaica. A committee
was at once formed, as an expression of the best sentiment of
England, for the purpose of bringing the perpetrators of the
crime to justice. Reviewing the work of the Jamaica committee, of
which he had been chairman, John Stuart Mill records its failure.
It was defeated not by the law, but by the grand jury, the
representatives of the people. “It was not a popular proceeding,”
he writes, “in the eyes of the great middle classes of England to
bring English functionaries to the bar of a criminal court for
abuses of power committed against negroes.” (Autobiography, pp.
296-9.) It is as unpopular to arraign our Government for abuse
of the Indian to-day. A single sentence, however, of Mr. Mill’s
gives me courage to proceed. He says: “The Lord Chief Justice
Cockburn’s charge settled the law for the future.” It may be that
some simple statements of fact may open the eyes of our people
and prepare the way for redress.
Early in the century Sidney Smith said of the English nation, in
reference to the possibility of converting the Hindoos to Christ:
“We have exemplified in our public conduct every crime of which
human nature is capable.” Those words stand to-day the terms of
the indictment of the United States in her dealings with the
Indians.
We have persistently _broken faith with them_. A volume of
testimony might readily be produced; but Gen. Leake’s able
setting forth of the history of our Indian treaties furnishes
all the proof necessary. But as a single illustration, take
this statement from a Government official. In seven of our most
important treaties with as many different tribes we have bound
ourselves to provide education for the children of those tribes.
At a low estimate there are 33,000 children of schoolable age.
The Government has provided accommodations for but 2,589. Add
5,082 as the number who may possibly be further accommodated
in the miserable makeshifts of transient day schools, and you
have but 7,671 as the total provision. (Letter of Acting Indian
Commissioner Brooks, April 28, 1879.)
But why begin this story? We have made the name Modoc one to
frighten children with for a generation; but the Modoc chief who
killed the brave Gen. Canby had first been himself betrayed, and
had his kindred killed under a U.S. flag of truce; and his women
had been violated and burned to death. (Bishop Whipple’s letter
to _N. Y. Evening Post_, Jan., 1879.) We fought the Nez Perces;
and when that able and manly chief Joseph surrendered, he did it
on conditions the flagrant violation of which on the part of our
Government is known to every Indian on the plains. (Mr. Tibball’s
letter of October 9, 1879, in _N. Y. Tribune_.) We have justified
the sneers with which Sitting Bull dismissed Assistant Secretary
Cowan in a council held before the outbreak of the last Sioux
war: “Return to your own land, and when you have found a white
man who does not lie, come back.” We furnished occasion for the
sorrowful words of the old chief who, after the Custer massacre,
came to the Whipple Commission on the Missouri and said: “Look
out there. The prairie is wet with the blood of the white man. I
hear the voices of beautiful women crying for their husbands, who
will never return. It is not an Indian war. It is a white man’s
war, for the white man has lied. Take this pipe to the great
Father and tell him to smoke it, for it is the pipe of truth.”
What a parody is this on our national history! We boast of a
father of his country who always told the truth. The Indian
knows our Government by the name of “Washington,” and the Indian
says “Washington always lies.” Gen. Stanley has said: “When I
think of the way we have broken faith, I am ashamed to look an
Indian in the face.” Gen. Harney said to the Sioux in 1868: “If
my Government does not keep this agreement, I will come back and
ask the first Indian I meet to shoot me.” (Bishop Whipple in
_Faribault Democrat_, Jan. 5, 1877.) Gen. Harney does not revisit
the Sioux.
We have _stolen_ from the Indians; we are stealing from them all
the time. I do not speak of the lordly robbery, in which the
strong possesses himself of the lands, and if occasion serve,
of the home of the weak, and justifies it by the right of the
stronger. I speak of the petty stealing of the thief. Three years
ago there came past my home a long procession of Indian ponies.
Where did they come from? They were the property of the Sioux
on the reservations west of us. In the face of the ordinance of
1789, which expressly declares that their lands and property
shall never be taken, nor their liberties invaded, except in
lawful wars authorized by Congress, in violation of the terms of
their treaties, and in disregard of the express declaration of
the President in response to the telegram of the agent, “Tell the
friendly Indians that they shall be protected in their persons
and property,” their ponies were gathered and driven off by
officers of the army acting under orders. The Indians were left
without their only means of transportation for fuel or food, and
no redress has ever been secured. No inventory of individual
personal property was kept, and the stolen ponies were scattered
through Minnesota, and what were left sold for a song in St. Paul.
Gen. Crook has recently said that the Sioux of the Red Cloud and
Spotted Tail bands have been robbed during the past winter and
spring of over a thousand ponies, which robbery the army, under
the new _posse comitatus_ act, is powerless to prevent. (Letter
of June 19, 1879, in _New York Tribune_.)
What I am saying must not be understood as an arraignment of
the officers of the army, or indeed of the chief officials of
the Government. The army officers have been almost without an
exception the firm friends of the Indian, and none have borne
more emphatic testimony to their bad treatment than such generals
as Sherman, Harney, Stanley, Augur, Howard, Pope and Crook. The
latter said the other day, in response to the remark that it
was hard to be called to sacrifice life in settling quarrels
brought about by thieving contractors, “I will tell you a harder
thing. It is to be forced to fight and kill Indians when I know
they are clearly in the right.” The responsibility is with the
representatives of the people, with Congress.
But to return to the indictment. We have _forced the Indians
to break the law_ by placing them under conditions in which it
was not possible for them to obey the law and live. This can be
proven by the records of many of the Indian reservations when
we have attempted to shut them in on lands where starvation was
inevitable. Of my own knowledge I can speak of a reservation on
which some 1,700 Indians were commanded to remain where there
was barely food for a grasshopper, and where in the month of
September the little children begged the passer for food, and
the dogs were the picture of famine. We have debauched their
women. Remember that an Indian has no standing in our courts,
and it is easy to see what contact with the whites means to him
and his family. He has no redress when his home is violated;
and the knowledge of his helplessness makes him the prey of
every libertine, until on the distant plains the proximity of
a Government post is a sign of his misery. (General Carrington
construed this remark to apply to army officers, and corrected
it publicly. That was not its intent. The officers of the army
are gentlemen. The fort brings into the neighborhood of the
Indians and offers more or less of shelter to many men of a very
different stamp.)
We have not stopped short of _murder_. The record is a long and
bloody one. The details of the Custer massacre are still fresh
in your minds. The nation stood still and lifted up its hands in
horror at the disaster which in a moment had annihilated every
man of a large detachment of U.S. troops, not sparing their noble
and brilliant leader. But where was the real “Custer massacre”?
Go back to 1868, to where, under the shadow of Fort Cobb, on
land assigned to them by the United States, stood a small Indian
village. Its chief was Black Kettle, a man whose name was a
by-word among his fellows for cowardice, because he could not be
induced to fight the whites—a man of whom Gen. Harney said, “I
have worn the uniform of the United States for fifty-five years;
I knew Black Kettle well; he was as good a friend of the white
man as I am.”
He had been to the commandant of the post seeking protection for
himself and his people, because troops were in the neighborhood.
Four days afterwards Gen. Custer surrounded that village, and
although the Indians fought with desperation, not a man, woman or
child escaped alive. Gen. Custer doubtless believed he had fallen
upon a hostile camp. Was the mistake any the less terrible? Was
the butchery any the less shocking? The blood of innocent Indians
on the Wischita cried unto God, and the answer came in the deluge
of blood on the Rosebud. * * * *
But you ask, has this been the history of our other Indian wars?
Our first war with the Sioux was in 1852 to 1854. For thirty
years it had been the boast of the Sioux that they had never
killed a white man. How did the war begin? A Mormon emigrant
train crossing the plains lost a cow, which a band of Sioux, who
were living in the neighborhood in perfect peace, found and took.
The Mormons discovering this, made complaint at Fort Laramie, and
a lieutenant with a squad of soldiers was sent to recover the
lost property. It could not be found. It was already assimilated
into Indian. But the Indians offered to pay for it. This the
lieutenant refused to accept, demanding the surrender of the man
who had taken the cow for punishment. The Indians said he could
not be found; whereupon—will it be believed?—the lieutenant
ordered his troops to fire, and the Indian chief fell dead. Those
troops never fired again; they were killed in their tracks; and
this was the beginning of the great Sioux war which cost the
Government forty millions of dollars and many lives. (Speech of
President Seeley, of Massachusetts, in Congress, April 13, 1875.)
You know the story of the Sioux war in Minnesota—the withheld
appropriations, the taunts and the starvation. We need not open
that terrible chapter again.
We were at it again in 1866. In violation of the most explicit
agreements we built Forts Phil Kearney, Reno and Smith, in their
country; they flew to arms; the cost to the Government was a
million dollars a month; and finally the forts were vacated.