Indian child

“ The education of the Indian child is an object of the most profound interest, not only to his own family but to the whole tribe. He is taught to love his country and tribe, to contemn falsehood, to reverence age, to be modest and silent; he is strictly enjoined to reward a kindness, but also to avenge an injury; to aid and guard a friend, but also to injure, by every means in his power, and relentlessly to persecute, an enemy; to abhor theft, unless it be practised on the property of an enemy, when it is called highly meritorious. ”

“ With this cold bath the child may be said to enter its earthly existence. Henceforth life is to be a succession of hardening processes. Indian babies get no foolish and weakening coddling. They are loved dearly and petted often, but are made to lie down on flat boards or basket cradles, with arms and legs strapped down, and are thus early accustomed to physical restraint. They sleep out of doors from the day of their birth, and become accustomed to all kinds of weather. For an Indian child who has taken cold we shall look in vain. ”

“ It is an unusual experience to hear an Indian baby cry. From its earliest years it seems to adopt that uncomplaining attitude toward life that is so marked a characteristic of the adults. Though she treats her offspring with no active unkindness—in all the years I spent in South America I have never seen an Indian mother strike a child—the aboriginal woman seems to endure it passively, like any other burden thrust upon her from which there is no escape, carrying it where it will be least troublesome, and never, at least openly, showing any caressing fondness for it. ”

“ There had been dreadful massacres immediately following this call. Therefore it was deemed wise to impress the sound early upon the mind of the child.
Indian children were trained so that they hardly ever cried much in the night. This was very expedient and necessary in their exposed life. In my infancy it was my grandmother’s custom to put me to sleep, as she said, with the birds, and to waken me with them, until it became a habit. She did this with an object in view. An Indian must always rise early. In the first place, as a hunter, he finds his game best at daybreak. ”

“ It is a mistake to think that the Indian child receives no higher instruction. This, however, is effected by moral suasion alone, and physical punishment is extremely rare. Great good-humour prevails among the children, and fighting and quarrelling are practically unknown.
At about fifteen years of age the Indian boy undertakes a solitary fast and vigil, during which his totem or medicine spirit is supposed to instruct him regarding his future career. At about thirteen years of age the girl undergoes a like test, which signalizes her entrance into womanhood. ”

“ They run many a mile in these moccasins without getting tired or losing their breath.
Sometimes the little Indians have great feasts when ducks and geese, deer and hares are to be 96 found, or when the berries and birds’ eggs are plentiful. But many a time during the long winter game is scarce, and there is no food to be had. Then the children must not complain, though they are faint with hunger. If an Indian child hopes to grow up and be a brave man, he must learn to bear many things and show no one how much he is suffering. ”

“ Maternal affection evinces itself, by singing words, to a cheerful air, over the slumbers of the child, which, being suspended in a kind of cradle receives, at the same time a vibratory motion. Children have likewise certain chants, which they utter in the evenings, while playing around the lodge door, or at other seasons of youthful hilarity. Some of the Indian fables are in the shape of duets, and the songs introduced in narrating their fictitious tales, are always sung in the recital. ”

“ The Indian child does not suffer from teething, for all have a small wooden image tied round the neck, and the little one, because of this, is supposed to be saved from all baby ailments! Their husbands and sons leave them for months while they go into the interior for rubber or cocoa, and when one comes back, riding on his bullock or mule, he is affectionately but silently received. ”

“ The child old enough to toddle about the streets often remains on the mother’s back, as if to hold the place for the next comer. It is a common experience to hear an Indian child ask in a perfectly fluent tongue for a serving at the maternal source of supply. ”

“ The Indian is a child and needs a Father; physically mature, he is mentally an infant. He stands proud but helpless on the track of a locomotive. He will not heed the advice of whites inferior in natural force to himself, and such, as a rule, he has to deal with. No wonder the young prefer their own leaders. In the school of civilization only object lessons are good for anything. What lessons we have given the Indians!
Recent agitation has chiefly concerned the education, lands and rights of the race, and progress has been made in the way of opportunities offered, but the Indian has not moved. ”

“ THE INDIAN AND HER BABY I have elsewhere spoken of the Indian woman’s reception of her child. It is welcomed with joy, and yet in its first hour’s treatment most white women would think its life would terminate. After seeing that it breathes properly—that is, through the nose—the mother carries her little one to the nearest creek or water-hole and gives it a good bath. Cold water has no terrors for her, and she does not fear its use for the child. ”

“ Soon after, he went to the white people, and said to them—"When white man's child die, Indian may be sorry—he help bury him—when my child die, no one speak to me—I make his grave alone. I can no live here, for I have no friend to love me."
The poor Indian gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child, and carried it with him 200 miles through the forest, to join the Canada Indians.
The Indian loved his child, and he wanted friends. So you children will need a friend to look to every day. When we are sick, in distress, or about to die, we want a friend in whom we may trust and be happy. ”

“ The Indian mother still adheres to the primitive method of carrying her child. Instead of supporting it in her arms, with the unhealthful inclination of person which a burden there will always induce, she tosses it on her back, into the bunt of her shawl, and walks off erect as the Indian’s tree, which stood up so straight it leaned backward. When hunger overtakes it she will feel a slight pull on one of the long braids in which her hair falls over its form ”

“ Simplicity and naturalness accompany every stage of the little one’s life until the age of puberty, when the child-life is supposed to end, and the man or woman life begins. 184
A HEALTHY AND HAPPY INDIAN BABY.
Now, while of very necessity our method of treating white children must be different from this, we can learn many lessons from the Indian that will materially benefit our race. ”

“ I have been told that many Indian tribes name a child from the greatest event in the life of its oldest living relative. When the child reaches maturity, he earns a name for himself by some characteristic achievement, goaded to it, no doubt, by the horrors of his given name. ”

“ If he ever attains anything in the field of science, it must be because another blood inoculates in his own blood the divine breath of wisdom, and then he will be able to advance somewhat when the cross whitens his olive-colored face, has lowered his prominent cheek-bones, and elevated his flat nose a trifle. Until that time comes, the Indian will always be a grown-up child, as simple, as ignorant, and as credulous as a child, but with all the passions, vices, and defects of the adult. ”

“ Whenever she grows weary one end of the board is stuck into the ground and the children often are left for a considerable time. The appearance is singular, and would astonish those that had never seen the Indians' manner of treating their children. Indian children are white when born, their eyes very black. Their hair long, straight and black. Their features full and well-shaped with large, Roman noses. They look healthy and appear to live on one-half the nourishment which would be necessary for other children. ”

“ Of the mode in which the North American Indians educate their children.
Many of the Asiatic nations and African tribes sell their children without compunction; but no emolument or hope of advantage can induce a North American Indian to part with his child to strangers. Of the tenderness with which the American Indians regard their offspring, Buchanan witnessed the following manifestation:—
“A mother with an infant at her breast, and two other children, one about eleven and the other eight or nine years of age, were in a canoe near a mile from land, during a violent squall. ”

“ The Indian youth — who had been repressed as an infant, left alone for long hours strapped on his birch or bark cradle leaning against tree or wigwam, and not given to crying, because he learned very early that there was no use in crying — was trusted as a child to growth and self-development. ”

“ And it may be said that it will always remain small in proportion to the whole number of Indian children of school age. But, I have no doubt, even this comparatively small number, when returning to their tribes, will exercise a very perceptible influence in opening new views of life, in encouraging the desire for improvement and in facilitating the work of the schools at the agencies. This influence will naturally be strengthened in the same measure as the number of well-educated Indians grows larger. ”

“ In this respect, “ [t] he removal of Indian children by [S] tates ha [d] much in common with Indian boarding schools.” Fletcher & Singel 952. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Indian-child removal reached new heights. Surveys conducted in 1969 and 1974 showed that “approximately 25–35 per cent of all Indian children [were] separated from their families.” AAIA Report 1. Often, these removals whisked children not only out of their families but out of their communities. Some estimate that “more than 90 per cent of non-related adoptions of Indian children [were] made by non-Indian couples.” ”

“ Worden are not faddists. They are earnestly and steadfastly endeavoring to fulfill the trust committed to them, to develop their children into strong healthy women, to strengthen their powers of endurance, and develop their physical faculties by bringing them up in accordance with all the laws of health.”
Another thing that I would have white women learn from their Indian sisters, is a thing they used to know but are rapidly forgetting. That is, the joy of suckling their own children. An Indian mother that does not suckle her own child is almost unknown. ”

“ The work of the minister and his assistant teachers in the boys’ school, and the English women giving their lives to work among the girls, is another fine medium for developing patriotism in the Indians here and to the north. Indian children appear at these schools from “anywhere up Arctic way” and on their arrival are frequently suffering from troublesome diseases, of which they must be cured before anything can be done for them from the teaching point of view. ”

“ Indian children are never punished; but, after all, they are not bad. The boys like to hunt the snowbirds with bows and arrows. They kill a great many too. The little girls play with corn-cob dolls and little tents and travois, or toshoes, as they call them, sometimes drawn by dogs.
The Indian children have hard lives after all. They cannot live to grow up unless they are pretty strong. A great many little ones die for want of good, wholesome food, and many for want of fresh air and warm clothes. We want all the little boys and girls in Christian homes to remember the little Dakotas. ”

“ The Indian babies seem never to cry, never to squall, as more civilized babies are in the habit of doing, and are never chastised. "It would be thought very unnatural and cruel in a mother to flog or strike her child." All the Indians treat with much ceremony and respect the body of any bear they may have killed. ”

“ The schools are really boarding schools, where the children stay continuously for nine months, being completely clothed by the Indian service. Sometimes boys and girls will escape and run home to hide, but the disciplinarian and Indian policeman usually ferret them out and bring them back, or else seize the father and hold him in jail until the scholar is produced again. Indian children are taught more of the useful arts and household arts than are the white children, but also have access to a college education through their university or normal schools. ”

“ With such a start and well-meaning officers, who, when necessary, even would strictly insist that all cultivate their lands properly, most of the Indians would, within a few years, become self-supporting and also support their children. These children, as they grow up, in turn should be made to assist their parents in their home duties.
“Reservation day-schools, as a rule, should suffice also for the Indian children. In these they could surely receive such an education as is necessary for an honest and happy living. Most of the white children in country districts have no better opportunity.” ”

“ Placed under the care of trustworthy Indian women, they are there taught to spin wool, flax, and cotton, and do no leave their seclusion till they are old enough to be married. The Indian children attend the same school as the children of the white colonists. A certain number of them, chosen from those who exhibit most intelligence, are taught music—plain-chant, violin, flute, horn, violincello, and other instruments. ”