SCHOOL NOTES.
Our picture gallery is full of interest --- at least to us. It
is true Hogarth would be
disgusted with our artists for their entire disregard of his "Line
of Beauty," and Titian wonder
at the lack of the knowledge of coloring which these aborigines manifest,
but it is truth to
Indian life which so charms us.
A piece by a young Arapahoe represents one of their warriors
holding in his hand a spear,
its staff wound with fur and ornamented with feathers. To his
head is fastened an
ornament of eagle's feathers, which fall gracefully back to his feet.
His nude bust painted
yellow, blue waist cloth edged with white, scarlet leggins and beaded
moccasins of a
variety of hues, indicate at a glance to what school the artist belongs.
"Six Cheyenne Dancers," by White Buffalo, well
represents life in an Indian village.
"Me Four Years Ago," by Thomas Carlyle, one of the band
boys, shows us a bow and
quiver full of arrows, stacked in the ground, from which are suspended
a looking-glass, fan
and paint bag, while he dances with a young woman, placing his right
shoulder against her
left. Both are gaily dressed, the young woman very richly, as
she wears a cape covered
with elk teeth, while her dress and moccasins indicate by the wonderful
combination of
their coloring that the artist may possibly have fallen upon the suggestive
bits of colored
rays found in the room of Paul Veronese at the time of his death.
Two larger pieces by a young Cheyenne, represents himself
and a few of his friends on a
war party, one against the Osages, and the other the Pawness.
The dress of the warriors
and the ornamentation of their horses, as well as their reclining position
on their horses,
which are running at full speed, all are characteristics of Indian
warfare.
The best piece is a pencil sketch of a buffalo chase,
by another Cheyenne, though the boy
artist shows the lack of his knowledge of perspective by placing the
horse and rider in the
foreground in hot haste after an invisible object, while the buffalo
is above and beyond,
running at full speed. Passing by others we must not fail to
notice a comic piece
improvised by one of the younger pupils during a few spare moments
in the school room.
There are birds on trees, on nests in the grass or standing in sedgy
marsh land, and a
turtle moving slowly along; but the boy chasing jack-rabbits, one of
which he has shot and
left bleeding on the ground with the arrow quivering in the wound,
while he persues three
others, two other boys mounted on jack-rabbits which they are in vain
endeavoring to guide,
and a third who has fallen from his wild steed, while he is in a very
ungraceful attitude on
the ground, shows the love of the ludicrous in these boys whom strangers
think so dull and
devoid of thought."
March 1881 School News. |
The Indian is patriotic. A dispatch dated Black
River Falls, Wis., Mar. 3, says: Warriors of the Winnebago tribe, headed
by "Green Cloud," the famous scout, tender their services in case a declaration
of war is the outgrowth of the pending inquiry over the disaster to the
battleship Maine. Chief "White Buffalo" will communicate with
the war department at once. He says 200 of the young men of his tribe
would be ready in ten hours to start for the front. This is the first
manifestation of patriotism in this section of the state.
March 11, 1898 INDIAN HELPER
We all remember Annie Thomas when a pupil with us. She
recently attended the Omaha Exposition and found there a number of our
old pupils. Among others, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Davis, White Buffalo,
Jesse Bent, Frank Everett, Joe Stewart, Elsie Springer Baxter, all in attendance
upon the Indian Congress, and most of them as interpreters. She missed
by only a few hours seeing Nellie Carey. Mrs. Lillibridge says that
the Genoa brass band played for a few weeks at the Exposition, and won
the admiration of the people. Captain Mercer who is in charge of
the Indian Congress spoke of them in the highest terms.
September 30, 1898 INDIAN HELPER
Cleaver Warden, Jessie Bent, Left Hand, Scabby Bull, Black Crow,
White
Buffalo, Washie, of the Arapahoe tribe; Robert Burns, John Otterby,
Little Wolfe, Little Chief, Little Hand, Horse Road, Big Bear, Cloud Chief,
Buffalo Meat, Three Fingers, All Runner, Wolfe Robe, Prairie Chief, of
the Cheyenne tribe, and all of the Oklahoma Territory, in charge of Mr.
Chester Cornelius, arrived from Washington, on Wednesday. Messrs.
Burns, Warden and Bent are old Carlisle pupils.
December 9, 1898 INDIAN HELPER
Mr. Seger's Letter.
SEGER COLONEY,
August 18, 1890.
Capt. R.H. PRATT - DEAR SIR:
In response to your inquiry in regard to teh religious
excetement among the Indians, will say that I have waited some time before
answering, in hopes taht I might gain ifnormation taht would enable me
to give intelligent answers to your questions, but as there is nothing
intelligent or reasonable about this fanaticism, my account of it will
have to be as absurd as the religious belief that I am trying to write
about. The belief that Christ has come upon the earth, to re-establish
the Indians in their old ways and to check teh whtie man in his efforts
to civilize them, originatged according to teh best information I can gain
at Shoshone Agency, Wyoming. The first information I got in regard to it
was from some of my Indians, who had been to Darlington and had returned
bringing the word that White Buffalo a returned Carlisle student
had been to visit the Northern Cheyennes and had brought back the report
that Jesus had come down upon the earth again and had appeared to the Indians;
that he was discovered by two Indians who had found him by following a
light in the sky during eighteen days' travel over a country destritute
of water, yet at each camping place they were supplied with water from
a little pool that came out of the ground and furneshed just enough for
their needs and no more.
At the end of the eighteen days' journey they came to
a secluded place near a mountain and here they found a wicky-up buildt
of bull rushes, and on entering it they saw Jesus and saw where *white*
men had driven nails in his hands and where they had pierced his side.
Jesus told them that he had come once to save the white
men and they had crucified him adn this time he had appeared to the Indians,
and they should go back and tell the INdians what they had seen.
The two Indians were then borned up in a cloud and in
a very short time were set down at their home where they related what they
had seen; whereupon, the Indians picked out three other Indians to go and
substantiate the report of the two first, as it was hinted that they were
not as reliable as they might be.
I have not heard whetehr the last party ever made a report
or not. When White Buffalo left the north they had not returned,
yet the report that White Buffalo brought awakened a great deal
of interest. It was talked over by old men and we soon began to hear a
great deal about it.
At first it was claimed that the Jesus that
these Indians saw was exactly like the pictures of him in the Bible. Thsi
seemed to establish the identity beyond a doubt. there was a great deal
of stress put on the fact that he wore long hair.
It soon became current that Christ would wipe out the
white people, adn bring the dead to life among the Indians, and that flesh
would grow again upon the buffalo bones and that they would again be plenty.
Some even claimed that this Christ had written a letter
to President Harrison, giving him two years to take the white men back
across the salt water, and if he did not do this the white people must
take the consequences.
It is to be expected that Jesus will gather all the INdians
together in one place wher ehe is, and when they start to go to this place
if any white man tries to stop them they (the white men) will drop dead.
Others claim taht when they start to go where Jesus is,
that is sthe soldiers kill them to prevent them from goign it will not
matter for their souls will go right on.
After a while it seemed to occur to some that there might
be some mistake about the report that White Buffalo brought back.
There were some letters written making inquiries of the Northern Cheyennes
adn Arapahoes. Soon after I heard that letters had been received confirming
the report.The following is a copy of one of them:
PINE RIDGE AGENCY, DAK:
DEAR BROTHER: - es, it is so about Jesus and all
INdians talking about it now the heaven, come to save the Indians with
long hair first then the white men Jesus came to save INdians. It is to
far up in sky where he was. It is not half so far where he is now you may
come to him and all the Indians Jesus gives some berries some black and
some red I ate two. How ou all getting along in Darlington. Please send
me some money and tell red Necks wife to send money too. From your
brother,
CROOKED NOSE."
Last winter the Arapahoes raised about $180 and sent Washea,
Sergeant of Scouts, and Black Coyote, captain of Police, up north to see
whetehr the story is true or not. They returned and the Indians congregated
to hear the report. A delegation came up from the Kiowas adn Comanches,
and from the Caddoes and Wichitas.
The report was to the efect taht they did not go to where
Jesus was, but they saw Indians that said it was true that he had come,
and as they beleived this they came back.
Since then, Little Chief, returned Florida prisoner has
made a trip north to learn abou tit and came back with only hear-say evidence.
Yet all the cam Indians that I have met believe in it more or less, and
there are very few school-children who will say that they do not believe
it.
October/November 1890 THE RED MAN, p. 3, 6.
TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT.
......From time to time throughout the history of the school illustrated
stories have appeared in the public prints, especially in the Sunday editions,
making most flagrantly false allegations against returned Carlisle students.
Within the past five years as many as twenty such stories have been printed,
all of them entirely false,and some of them most malignant in character.
There has seemed to be a syndicate of fabricators moved by a common purpose
to disparage and manufacture prejudice. My repeated contradictions of these
stories to newspapers themselves did not stop these
misrepresentations.
In July last White Buffalo, one of
our first students, who left the school eighteen years ago, was spublished
as having committed a triple murder at the Cheyenne Agency, and after confession
of his crimes was in jail awaiting the action of the courts. This story
with the usual accompaniment of Indian pictures and the alleged picture
of one of his victims was printed in the Philadelphia "North American."
No murder had been committed, and White Buffalo was reported by
his agent to be one of the best Indians on the reservation, engaged in
farming and stock-raising and sending his children to school. I sent for
White
Buffalo and brought suit against "The North American" for criminal
libel. When the managers found they had been imposed upon they printed
the facts and gave them wide circulation, adn zealously began a prosecution
fo their western correspondent who had written the article from Wichita,
Kansas, but who had left that state and gone into Missouri. The suit is
still pending, awaiting opportunity to get the correspondent before the
courts at his own home in Kansas. The treatment of this case in the west
indicates large sympathy with such misrepresentation....
August 14, 1903 RED MAN AND HELPER
The Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Fair:
By William B. Freer.
THE SECOND annual fair of the Cheyennes and
Arapahos of Oklahoma was held at the town of
Watonga about the middle of last September.
..........At this fair there was a decided increase in the number of
farm and garden exhibits over the number shown at the fair of the previous
year, notwith-standing the terrible drought of May and June. While at the
first fair many exhibits were fragmentary, at the Watonga fair the exhibits
were complete and unbroken. The following list will show the
number of exhibits of the different sorts of produce at the first and
second fairs :
Fair 1911. Fair 1910.
Yellow corn, - - - - - - - - 68 35
White corn, - - - - - - - - 58 67
Bloody Butcher corn, - - - - - 49 32
Squaw corn, - - - - - - - - 33 16
Milo maize, - - - - - - - - 9 11
Sorghum in heads, - - - - - - 15 11
Watermelons, - - - - - - - - 21 3
Kaffir cam, - - - - - - - - 77 43
Cotton stalks, - - - - - - - - 10 2
Onions, _ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ 3 8
Irish potatoes, - - - - - - - - 5 5
Sweet potatoes, - - - - - - - 6 7
Oats, _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ 3 7
Wheat, _ _ _ - - _ _ _ - _ 5 ’ 4
Miscellaneous, - - - - - - - 33 78
Total, .- - - - - - - - 395 329
The names of some of the prize winners follow:
Little
Rock, Cut Finger, Coyote, Blind Bull, Little Bird, Howling Hawk, Howling
Crow, Philip Rabbit, Tobacco, Edward Yellow Calf, John Bull, Doty Lumpmouth,
Bird White Bear, Benjamin Spotted Wolf, Short Nose, Charley Whiteman, Peter
Bird Chief, Mark Tall, Black White Man, Victor Bushy Head, White Thunder,
White Buffalo, James Paints Yellow, and DeForest Antelope. Many of
these Indians received several prizes....
February 1912 RED MAN - for full account of the C&A Fair,
go to Cheyenne list. |