The Indian To-day: The Past and Future of the First AmericanEastman, Charles A.
History
The Indian To-day: The Past and Future of the First American
Eastman, Charles A.
Indians of North America
The social morality of the various tribes differs very much at the
present time. Under our original customs, the purity of woman and the
home was safeguarded by strict rules, with severe penalties for their
transgression. When, however, native customs were broken down without
the efficient substitution of civilized laws, there was much social
irregularity.
Plural marriages were permissible under our system, but were not very
general, and plural wives were usually sisters. The missionaries, and in
some instances the Federal authorities, have required elderly men to
abandon all but one wife, leading to difficult problems. Many of the
younger generation are now legally married, and an effort is made to
oblige them to secure legal divorces when a separation is sought, but as
some state courts hold that they have no jurisdiction to hear
applications of non-citizen Indians living on reservations, this is
often impracticable, and naturally the dissatisfied simply abandon wife
or husband, and perhaps take another by Indian custom only. It is
advisable that family records be more strictly kept than is now the
case.
UNEDUCATED LEADERS AMONG INDIANS
I wish to refute the common misconception that it is only the educated
and Christian Indian who has contributed to the progress of his people
and to the common good of both races. There are many men wholly
unlettered, and some of whom have not proclaimed themselves followers of
Christ, who have yet exerted great influence on the side of
civilization. Almost every tribe has a hero of this type who arose at a
critical juncture to lead his fellows.
In the early part of the nineteenth century there was Little Turtle, a
celebrated Miami chief, who, to be sure, defended his country bravely,
but when he made a treaty he stood by it faithfully, and advocated peace
and civilization for his people. The Pottawatomie chief Pokagon was
another, whose son Simon Pokagon was prominent at the World's Fair in
Chicago. A leading contemporary of these men was Keokuk of the Sacs and
Foxes. Wabashaw the third, of the Mississippi Sioux, was known as a
strong friend to civilization; and so was my own great-grandfather,
Chief Cloud Man, whose village occupied the present site of the city of
Minneapolis. His son, Appearing Sacred Stone, whose English name was
David Weston, was a fine character--a hereditary chief who took a
homestead at Flandreau and became a native preacher under Bishop Hare.
Chief Strike-the-Ree, by whose influence and diplomacy the Yankton Sioux
were kept neutral throughout the Sioux wars; Lone Wolf of the Kiowas,
Quanah Parker of the Comanches, whose mother was a white captive, and
Governor James Big Heart of the Osages were all men of this type,
natural leaders and statesmen. Iron Eyes, or Joseph La Flesche, a head
chief of the Omahas, was a notable leader in progressive ways; and so is
John Grass of the Blackfoot Sioux, also a distinguished orator.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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