Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical SketchDenig, Edwin Thompson
History
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch
Denig, Edwin Thompson
Assiniboine Indians; Indians of North America -- Missouri River Valley
Habits of industry should be inculcated as they grow up, and the field
of their operations enlarged when they are grown, by portioning out
lands and providing a market for their surplus stock and produce.
Some of the useful mechanical arts could also be introduced, but only
those that are useful in their present condition and growing state. A
century or two may elapse before watchmakers, glass blowers, or even
tailors and shoemakers would be necessary, though a few gunsmiths,
blacksmiths, carpenters, and weavers would find immediate employment.
The principles of the Christian religion would of course at the same
time be taught, but the principal feature of these establishments,
as soon as the boys and girls were able to work, should be industry,
principally in agricultural and pastoral pursuits. The great errors
into which missionaries have fallen are that they make the observance
of religious duties the sole object and neglect the others.[16]
Also their zeal in this induces them to interfere with the present
government, domestic arrangements, and superstitions of the grown
Indians, thereby incurring their enmity, disgust, or revenge. The
present grown-up generation should be left entirely alone, not
interfered with, no attempt made to convert them, or even induce them
to work. It is useless, inexpedient, and subverts the general ends.
The first thing a missionary does is to abuse the Indian for having a
plurality of wives.
[16] Here Denig mildly protests against the unreasonable emphasis
placed on the observance of religious rites by the missionaries to the
exclusion of other duties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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