Washoe people

“ The older they get the more repulsive and filthy they become. While young some of the women have pleasing, intelligent and alert faces, while children of both sexes are attractive and interesting. But with them as with all aboriginal people who have absorbed the vices and none of the virtues of the whites, the Washoes are fast losing power, vigor and strength by disease and dissipation. The smoke of the campoodie fire is also ruinous to their eyes and ophthalmia is prevalent among them. It is no uncommon thing to see a man or woman entirely blind. ”

“ On the other hand, I was impressed by the tenacity of the less material aspects of the culture. The always-difficult-to-define world view or ethos of the Washo, which so clearly separates them from other cultures, is very much an entity expressed in the attitudes and actions of the Washo Indians, whether they are oldsters who can remember many aspects of the “old days” or children who have not yet entered the newly integrated schools of Nevada. This continuity seems most clearly expressed in the area which we subsume under the title “Religion.” ”

“ That, in turning the attention of the race to manual and industrial training, Washington performed a great work is not to be denied. That, in influencing many of his people to follow him in such a program, he has raised the ambition of not a few to a much higher plane than the race had shown itself heretofore capable of, must be admitted, and these are great achievements. But it is an error to imagine that Washington ever made for himself or his race any renunciation of the aspiration for social equality. ”

“ As he moved about in the New England town, he was much impressed by Northern civilization, and was greatly surprised to see white people, who while rich, educated, and powerful, were yet not slave-holders. ”

“ The attitude of one Washo woman sums the question up quite well: “I think them peyote people [she was not a peyotist but had encouraged her son to attend a meeting to cure a back injury] believe more what they doing than the white preacher.” Her own religion is summed up in her actions. In addition to sending her son to peyote meetings, she had taken her granddaughter to the shaman and is a regular attendant at the church sewing school. She was also the person who waited until the minister left the church to repeat ancient funeral prayers. ”

“ It is remarkable that you never hear this sort of language, and see this servile manner, in the common savages of our wilderness. It belongs only to the common people, and I am told, to the shop-keepers of England, and to our negroes. Necessity first inspires the poor with awe for the rich, and by and by it grows into a principle. ”

“ Contrasting the life in Africa with that of slaves in America, Washington better expresses the idea in these words: "The porters, carrying their loads along the narrow forest paths, sing of the loved ones in their far-away homes. In the evening the people of the villages gather around the fire and sing for hours. ”

“ They baptized numerous black bodies, but the souls stayed chocolate. Civilization had brought all its attendants. Natives learned to speak English in order to lie in another language. They were schooled in new vices, new cheats, new gambles, new crimes. There were churches, but they were like the African Baptist or the A. M. E. churches of Owego; and there were saloons like Owego saloons.
Wadhams made so bold as to invade the dirty hut of one shiny onyx monarch of Gaboon known as King Jim Smith Bobala. Wadhams counseled this ace of spades that rum was ruining his people. ”

“ Becky Coleman
The nation should look with encouragement and gratitude to Booker T. Washington as the real Moses who, by industrial education, proposes to lead his people out of their real bondage. Only by making themselves worthy will they be able to exist on kindly terms with the white race. The same slow process of the ages which has wrought out Anglo Saxon civilization will elevate this race. Nature’s law of growth for them, as for white people, is struggle. The fittest will survive. ”

“ What is equally important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and self-control which is causing better relations to exist between the races, and is causing the Southern white man to learn to believe in the value of educating the men and women of my race. Aside from this, there is the influence that is constantly being exerted through the mothers' meeting and the plantation work conducted by Mrs. Washington.
Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in the buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in high moral characters are remarkable. ”

“ And the white farmers availed themselves freely of this opportunity and profited by it. The school's veterinarian is probably the only one in the county, and this division was established very largely for the purpose of bringing the school and the community—both white and black—into closer relation. In dealing with farmers, even more perhaps than with other classes of people, Washington would appeal to their pride and even to their vanity. ”

“ I replied, “are good Indians. I have heard the chief say many times that he was a friend to the people of Utah, that he had seen their big chief, who was a very good ‘tibo.’”
“What is that?” he asked.
“Oh, I forgot I was talking to white men,” I said; “‘tibo’ means friend.”
I told them that he had no need to fear Washakie’s tribe, but that old Pocatello had drawn away some of Washakie’s Indians, and that they were bad Indians, who were doing everything against the whites they could. Washakie had told me they were killing the emigrants and stealing their horses and burning their wagons. ”

“ I’se a taxpayer in my community; I’se edicated my children. And now, in my community, dey calls me ‘Mr. James Hill.’”
The old fellow had not only learned to raise cotton during these ten years, but, so far as he was concerned, he had solved the race problem.
As one travels through the Southland, he is continually meeting old Negro farmers like the one that I have described. It has been one of the great satisfactions of my life to be able from time to time to go out into the heart of the country, on the plantations and on the farms where the masses of 70the coloured people live. ”

“ But each gain for labor had come after a bitter struggle with the employers. So the whole history of the Wahoo Valley was written in the lines of his broken face.
The reformer with his iridescent dream of progress often hangs its realization upon a single phase of change. Thus when Grant Adams banished black powder from the district, he expected the whole phantasm of dawn to usher in the perfect day for the miners. When he secured electric lights in the runways and baths in the shaft house, he confidently expected large things to follow. ”

“ Yet others were men and women [pg 166] who voluntarily bound themselves to work for a term of years in payment of their passage to the colonies. By far the largest number of the white servants in Washington's day belonged to this last-mentioned class, who were often called "redemptioners." Some of these were ambitious, well-meaning people, perhaps skilled artisans, who after working out their time became good citizens and often prospered. ”

“ All these pupils lived on the farm, as did nearly all the people of the South. Washington wanted to so teach them that they would continue to live among their own people and their lives would be happier and better in every way. ”

“ MADISON WASHINGTON. BY L. MARIA CHILD.
This man was a slave, born in Virginia. His lot was more tolerable than that of many who are doomed to bondage; but from his early youth he always longed to be free. Nature had in fact made him too intelligent and energetic to be contented in Slavery. Perhaps he would have attempted to escape sooner than he did, had he not become in love with a beautiful octoroon slave named Susan. She was the daughter of her master, and the blood of the white race predominated in several of her ancestors. ”

“ While the present-day, half-educated, half-civilized Washoes are by no means representatives of the highest elements of natural enlightenment among the Indian race, they do possess legends about Tahoe, the following being the most interesting. ”

“ Up to this time he had known but two classes of white people, slave-holders and non-slave-holders. The non-slave-holding white people of the South, he knew, were generally ignorant, despised, and poor; while those who owned slaves seemed to own everything else worth having. Here in New England he observed that white people were high or low according to their character, ability, and possessions. Life appeared to him larger, wider, and fuller of possibilities than he had dreamed, even in his more hopeful days down on the Eastern Shore. ”

“ Never in the world had men known such absolute liberty as was attained here. There was not even the dominion of woman. And yet they were not happy.
They marched Washee-Washee to the Howling Wilderness, told the sentence, and called upon the Parson to enforce judgment.
He now took a cordial and began. Washee-Washee sat before him on a bench, leaning against the wall. The little man seemed as if he was about to go to sleep; possibly his conscience had kept him awake the night before, when he found that all his little investments had been a failure in the Forks. ”

“ On the morning of September 17, together with Mrs. Washington and my three children, I started for Atlanta. I felt a good deal as I suppose a man feels when he is on his way to the gallows. In passing through the town of Tuskegee I met a white farmer who lived some distance out in the country. In a jesting manner this man said: "Washington, you have spoken before the Northern white people, the Negroes in the South, and to us country white people in the South; but Atlanta, to-morrow, you will have before you the Northern whites, the Southern whites, and the Negroes all together. ”

“ The world held up the great Sage of Tuskegee—Booker T. Washington—as the only leader for the race. They looked forward to him and his teachings as the leadership for all times, not calculating that the industrially educated Negro would himself evolve a new ideal, after having been trained by the Sage of Tuskegee.
The world satisfied itself to believe that succeeding Negro leaders would follow absolutely the teachings of Washington. Unfortunately the world is having a rude awakening, in that we are evolving a new ideal. ”

“ No people on earth have a nobler patriotism, or greater love for their country than the Indians. We doubt not the doctor's diagnosis was correct, and we firmly believe that thousands of other leaders of that race have died of the same malady.
All fair-minded people now believe it was a mistake, and a burning shame, to take the Wallowa valley away from Joseph and his band for the benefit of a few greedy settlers, when there were at that very time teeming millions of acres of land just as good, and open to settlement, throughout eastern Oregon and border States. ”

“ If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?
The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. ”

“ Funerals are generally conducted by a Christian minister, but this appears to be a sop to white opinion rather than the result of any real desire on the part of the Washo to become Christians. At best they seem to have simply incorporated Christian services as another source of power. It is less than surprising that a people whose main religious emphasis seems to have been on curing or subsistence ritual should have found white doctors useful but white ministers a rather mysterious and superfluous bit of white culture. ”

“ Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. ”

“ Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven;
And yonder still, in spite of history's page,
Linger the golden and the silver age;
Upon the laboring gale
The news of future centuries is brought,
And of new dynasties of thought,
From your remotest vale.
⁠But special I remember thee,
Wachusett, who like me
Standest alone without society. ”

“ The domestic and personal servants lived lives of culture and inglorious ease compared with those of the field hands. They formed the aristocracy of colored Mount Vernon society and gave themselves airs accordingly.
Nominally our Farmer's slaves were probably all [pg 213] Christians, though I have found no mention in his papers of their spiritual state. But tradition says that some of them at Dogue Run at least were Voudoo or "conjuring" negroes.
Washington owned slaves and lived his life under the institution of slavery, but he loved it not. ”