Sarah Winnemucca's Practical Solution of the Indian Problem: A Letter to Dr. Lyman Abbot of the "Christian Union"Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer
History
Sarah Winnemucca's Practical Solution of the Indian Problem: A Letter to Dr. Lyman Abbot of the "Christian Union"
Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer
Indians of North America -- Education; Paiute Indians -- Education; Winnemucca, Sarah, 1844?-1891
Sarah wrote also that she had asked these people to write and tell me
of their approbation, because it was I that had given the schoolhouse.
But in doing this, and also by subsequently naming her school the
“Peabody Institute,” which is painted on the outside, there has grown
up a false impression, as if _I_ were the originator and prevailing
influence of the school. This is diametrically opposite to the fact;
for the very point I would make most prominent is that the whole thing
is an Indian idea and an Indian plan; and the reason that she feels me
to be her mainstay is that I do not bother her with my suggestions, but
wait to see what it is her impulse to do, because I see that she knows,
as I cannot, how the Indian mind is to be approached and set at work
for that self-development which is the only real education. I owe to
her a conviction, which has grown upon me continually for three years,
that the only vital education for the Indian as for every child is
Froebel’s method of keeping an equipoise of doing and thinking.
Soon after receiving the above letter I had several newspapers sent me
from Nevada, Utah, and California, from which I will extract specimen
paragraphs. One from a Lovelocks correspondent of the “Silver State”
says:--
“The Princess Sarah is making her school for young Piutes a
success. The attendance is large, and little Indians may be seen
on our streets every morning with their lunches, wending their
way to school, a mile and a half off. She keeps excellent order,
and conducts the school as systematically as any experienced
‘schoolma’am.’”
There is a very certain proof that neither Sarah nor her brother
suggested this article, in the seven words we put in italics in another
paragraph of it; for Piutes have never been known to handle “tomahawk
or scalping-knife,”--never took a scalp, though they have been scalped
themselves by whites, of which Sarah told several pathetic instances in
her lectures when she was here.
“Chief Natches has _put aside the tomahawk and scalping-knife_, and
taken hold of the plough and grubbing-hoe. He has cleared about forty
acres of the one hundred and sixty given him by Governor Stanford.
He will sow thirty acres of wheat, and put the rest in barley and
vegetables. He has a dozen or more Indians working with him upon a
dam belonging to his white neighbors, who pay him by allowing him
water for his ranch, this season.”
Another says:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Sarah Winnemucca's Practical Solution of the Indian Problem: A Letter to Dr. Lyman Abbot of the "Christian Union" — John Shaqi
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