Wichita people

“ Thanks to the movement for genuinely democratic popular government which Senator La Follette led to overwhelming victory in Wisconsin, that state has become literally a laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole. Nothing is easier than to demand, on the stump, or in essays and editorials, the abolition of injustice and the securing to each man of his rights. ”

“ His theory was, that little could be done in a religious way with the Indians until he could induce them to build homes, and plant and sow and reap, and adopt the methods of civilized people. Many had been induced to build houses, and much of the unnecessary nomadic life had been abandoned. Mrs. Whitman retained her wonderful voice and sang and won the hearts of the savages, long before she knew enough of the language to make the sentiment of her songs impressive lessons. ”

“ As far back in time as human records go, we ever find old men bewailing prevalent degeneracy, and sighing in vain for "the good old times" when they were young. It is a blessing given to the old that the disagreeable incidents of their youth should be forgotten, and only the pleasant events remembered. As a matter of fact, we of to-day may well rejoice that, while Wisconsin enjoyed a lusty youth, she has now, in the fullness of time, grown into a great and ambitious commonwealth, lacking nothing that her sisters own, in all that makes for the prosperity and happiness of her people. ”

“ For Wiccans who uphold the myth of the Burning Times, the early-modern period contains a repository of symbols for organizing their contemporary struggle against oppressive cultural forces. It is not, however, a foundational mythology or a narrative that explains why people must behave a certain way. Rather, modern-day experiences of oppression from the mainstream society have encouraged Wiccans to find historical analogues that might provide a language for contemporary concerns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ According to Wiccan accounts, the early-modern period in European history, roughly 1450-1700, witnessed the victory of an emerging rationalism, a new ethos which separated people from the Earth and encouraged exploitation of the environment and the colonization of individual bodies, forcing them into restricted economies as productive units. ”

“ All through the Union we need to learn the Wisconsin lesson of scientific popular self-help, and of patient care in radical legislation. The American people have made up their minds that there is to be a change for the better in their political, their social, and their economic conditions ”

“ No form of evil or misery is to be neglected. No class is to be ignored. No social form, family, state or church is to be left unused.
While Wichern is chiefly occupied with the labor of his own national church, his survey covers both Catholic and Protestant enterprises in Europe and America. Wichern expresses the hope that Christians divided upon creeds will find in practical efforts of benevolence a ground on which all can agree. His appreciation of others is liberal and unstinted. ”

“ They were in an Indian country from the first day's start, and met great numbers of savages, out on their hunts, many moving to new camps, and some on the war-path. At no time were the missionaries molested, but on the contrary, were treated with great courtesy, and as Mrs. Whitman wrote, "They seemed greatly surprised to see white women in the party." The Indian boys were soon in their element, and of inestimable value; they could swim the rivers like ducks, and took all the care of the loose stock, and were wise in the ways of plains' life. ”

“ The nerved and ever-exercised arm of free labor has changed a landscape wild and savage as the night scenery of Salvator Rosa into one of pastoral beauty,—the abode of independence and happiness. Under a similar system of economy and industry, how would Virginia, rich with Nature's prodigal blessings, have worn at this time over all her territory the smiles of plenty, the charms of rewarded industry! What a change would have been manifest in your whole character! Freemen in the place of slaves, industry, reputable economy, a virtue, dissipation despised, emigration unnecessary! ”

“ One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness, and they will go a long path to other hunting grounds. No white man will go with them, and no White Man's Book to make the way plain. I have no more words."
When this speech was translated and sent East it was published in the Christian Advocate in March, 1833, with a ringing editorial from President Fisk of Wilbraham College. "Who will respond to go beyond the Rocky Mountains and carry the Book of Heaven?" ”

“ While engaged with her husband in the editorial supervision of the Anti-Slavery Standard, she wrote her admirable Letters from New York; humorous, eloquent, and picturesque, but still humanitarian in tone, which extorted the praise of even a pro-slavery community. Her great work, in three octavo volumes, The Progress of Religious Ideas, belongs, in part, to that period. It is an attempt to represent in a candid, unprejudiced manner the rise and progress of the great religions of the world, and their ethical relations to each other. ”

“ The Indians never had a more sincere and earnest friend since good William Penn, founder of my native city, gave the world that glorious illustration of 'unbroken faith by the deeds of peace.' The martyr Whitman acted with equal good faith to the perfidious Cayuses. That at this mission had been aggregated all those appliances of civilization, church, school-house, work -shops, etc., by which the Indians were made the recipients of the advantages of civilized life. ”

“ Gentlemen, the perusal of the address and resolutions put forth by the Whig State Convention at Springfield, last week, brought me here. It seems to me that no true lover of human freedom can read that address and those resolutions intelligently, and understand their full scope and bearing, without being struck down by conviction, as suddenly as was St. Paul,—though the light and the voice come from an opposite quarter. Whatever the design of those papers may have been, [Pg 538] their whole argument and office are to wheel the Whig party into line, to fight the battles of slavery. ”

“ No other man among the pioneers, for his untiring energy in courting immigration, can be so nearly classed with Whitman.
They were all men, who, though in Oregon to convert Indian savages to Christianity, yet were intensely American. They thought it no abuse of their Christianity to carry the banner of the Cross in one hand and the banner of their country in the other. Missionaries as they were, thousands of miles from home, neglected by the Government, yet the love of country seemed to shine with constantly increasing luster. ”

“ These people have for several generations lived distinct from the great mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects they closely resemble. They have the same settled aversion to labor and the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold water." It has been said—I know not upon what grounds—that their ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood ”

“ And in the first place, we must say that a more glaring specimen of Jack-Mormonism never came to our knowledge. And then the attempt to make it all a Whig movement! What! Isn't John Harper a whig? The first time we ever saw the renowned individual, was in 1840, three years ago only, as President of a Whig Convention, and the largest meeting ever held in this county. But men change, and times change with them.--Ah! ”

“ It was in this early French Regime that Wisconsin’s Indian tribes underwent great changes in their manner of life due to contacts with the white man’s civilization, It was a time of warfare and a struggle for supremacy in North America between the British and the French, and 12 their Indian allies, with Wisconsin’s tribes espoused to the cause of the French. It was the heyday of the fur trade with literally millions of beaver and other skins being taken from Wisconsin to enrich the trader and obtain white man’s goods for the Indians. ”

“ They were willing to accept a religion which did 219 not interfere with savage customs, which had become a part of their lives. It was the custom of the Hudson Bay Company, by giving modest bribes, to win over any unruly chief. It was the best way to hold power; but the Missionaries held the tribes which they served up to a higher standard of morals.
The Cayuse Indians made a foray upon a weaker tribe, and levied on their stock in payment for some imaginary debt. Dr. Whitman gave the Chiefs a reprimand, and called it thieving, and demanded that they send back everything they had taken. ”

“ But in the upper country, inhabited by powerful and numerous tribes, religious antipathy and intolerance were likely to occasion disorders of a dangerous nature, particularly as neither party was able conscientiously to yield to the other, but bound by duty to combat the contrary opinion with all the zeal that was in it. Dr. Whitman could readily see that the ceremonials of the Catholic faith must prove attractive to the childish minds of savages, who were likely to turn away from the lessons of an austere religion to the delights of bells and beads. ”

“ More traditional models use an opposite approach, seeking to transform individuals in an objective, “top-down” technique, disciplining subjectivities into conformity with the “norm.” This is precisely what Wiccans resist when they appropriate the Burning Times mythology. Call it patriarchy, bureaucracy, capitalism, or whichever label one prefers, it represents the forced assimilation of individuals into an economy that circumscribes meaningful dissent and individual difference. ”

“ Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight. ”

“ Having accomplished his great undertaking, he was still the missionary and friend of the Indians, and at once dropped back to his work, and the drudgery of his Indian mission.
Again we find him enlarging his field of work, teaching his savage friends, not only Christianity, but how to sow, and plant, and reap, and build houses, and prepare for civilization. He took no part in the new political life which he had made possible. He was a stranger to all things except those which concerned the work he was called to do. ”

“ In our Wisconsin number we gave the life-history of one man who, beginning as a farmer’s son, had, by his energy, ability, and integrity, come to occupy a position of great power, wealth, and usefulness, and we emphasized the point, that, while he had been wonderfully successful, his highest claim to our admiration, lay in the fact that, whenever the opportunity offered, he had sought the prosperity of the nation, the state, or the city of his adoption, and had made his own gain and increasing wealth subordinate to the public weal. ”

“ If in our modern life, conditions are not conducive to the highest type of American manhood, we should attempt to find some way of helping men to help themselves. What is the need of a philosophy or an "ism" when there is obvious wrong to be righted? Whatever has been accomplished in Wisconsin seems to have been based upon this idea of making practice conform to the ideals of justice and right which have been inherited. If the weak ask for justice, the state should see that they get it certainly, quickly and surely. ”

“ For that purpose a constitution was drawn up, and a voluntary Association formed, which styled itself 'The Wisconsin Phalanx.' As the movement began to ripen into action, the friends fell off, and the circle narrowed down from about seventy to twenty persons. This little band was composed mostly of men [441] with small means, sturdy constitutions, below the middle age, and full of energy; men who had been poor, and had learned early to buffet with the antagonisms of civilization; not highly cultivated in the social and intellectual faculties, but more so in the moral and industrial. ”

“ Through the exploration of the early-modern period, Wiccans also seek to explore the possibility that individuals, or subjectivities, might once again carve out alternative spaces within society where they might practice self-transformation unmolested by authorities. ”

“ Whitman was conscious of it or not as she wrote, her letter describes a situation that boded ill for the mission. A proud tribe, accustomed in the past to dominate neighboring tribes, seeing its numbers decimated by war and by disease, and its lands each year more surely destined to pass into the hands of the white man — this was a situation that might easily, on further provocation, pass into one of bitter hostility and open revolt. ”