Volume 16 , Issue 43

Indian Contract Schools, Conspiracy Unmasked

In the 1 October 1896, The Indian Advocate, page 117 thru 120, we find this mention of Indian Contract Schools and the controversy surrounding them. The true history of warfare on the Catholic Indian schools.

It was on the 4th of June the United States Senate refused, by vote of 31 to 17, to recede from its amendment to the Indian Bill continuing the appropriation for its denominational schools for two years longer. This signified that while the House of Representatives had allowed itself to

be fooled and bought by the Apaists and other enemies of the commonwealth, the members of the upper chamber were aware that the present waive of fanaticism was only temporary, and that by the time they become candidates for re-election the sober second thought of the nation will have vindicated their position as the friends of justice and constitutional liberty.

On June 6th the lodge-ridden House once more refused to accept the Senate amendment, and the senators were obliged to accept a compromise, according to the terms of which the denominational Indian schools would cease on July 1st, 1897, to receive Government support and "undenominational schools" would take their place.

Will all that had been written on the subject of the Indian contract schools, very few, even among the Catholic population, understood the true history and significance of the controversy. The facts seemed to be these. During the administration of General Grant, which was notoriously controlled by the Methodist parsons, the latter discovered that most of the Christian Indians of the country were Catholics, and that Catholicity was continuing to spread rapidly among the aborigines -- the original and only true native Americans, by the way.

In order to remedy this state of affairs, and in order to accomplish by foul means what energy and self-sacrifice had been lacking to accomplish by fair ones, it was decided in the conventicles of heresy that the Government should assume entire control of the Indian Education, and place the Catholic missions, so far as possible in Protestant hands. This plan was successfully carried out; and under the pretext of an equal division of the missions among the various denominations of the country a large proportion of the Catholic Indians were placed under the charge of Protestant ministers and teachers.

Some of theses were honest, sincere men and others were unconscionable villains, who spared no pains to corrupt their simpleminded charges in morals as well as in faith.

But with a change of administration the Methodist hierarchy, which at one time became so bold that the General Conference seriouslyy discussed the possibility of making Methodism the national religion -- lost its grip on the government machinery, and in course of time the palpable injustice of a system which forced the Indians to practice a religion they detested began to be recognized. As a result those tribes which were sufficiently intelligent and loyal to their faith to maintain a standing protest against the enfringment of their religious liberty one after another won the privilege of having their beloved black-robes restored to them.

When the Protestant conspirators saw themselves compelled in so many cases to disgorge their stolen booty, and realized that their unclean trickery had only resulted in giving government support to the teachers of the Indian's own choice, their rags knew no bounds.

Then began the cry that the Catholics had far more than their share of Indian schools, and the word went round that the Protestants must have their due proportion or the whole system must go. The Indians were looked upon i other words, as a sort of booty, to be divided up among the spoilers, instead of as the remnant of a wronged and down-trodden people to whom their conquerers owed at least the blessings of civilization and religion and the largest possible degree of civil and religious liberty.

But the sectarians were lacking in self sacrifice, and competent volunteers willing and eager to devote themselves in return for the barest means of subsistence, or less than that, to the good of the red man, were not forthcoming from among their ranks; and those schools that they retained were, for the most part, notoriously inefficient as means of civilizing and elevating their wards; so that even when a fanatical parson like Morgan was at the head of the Indian Bureau they found it impossible with all their machinations to drive away the devoted priests and religious from their posts.

Then and only then, as a last resort it was decided that all government grants to denominational schools must be withdrawn.

What did that mean? It meant that the Indians were to be as far as possible, placed under the tutorship of ignorant hirelings, who would fleece and rob and corrupt them at their own pleasure, as multitudes of Protestant Indian agents had been doing wherever they were free from the vigilance of noble and god-fearing men and women -- all of the Catholic communion, -- who made the Indians the objects of their jealous solicitude, and took care to report to Washington all cases of gross abuse of power by unscrupulous officials.

It also meant that while the efficiency of the Indian schools was to be decreased ninety per cent, the cost of maintaining them was to be multiplied ten-fold. The Apaists had their fling.

But did the Protestants prefer to save the Indians destroyed body and soul and assumed a new load of taxation to boot, rather than have them instructed in the Catholic faith, which they preferred and in most cases already professed and practiced? That is what it amounted to.

The bigots and thieves, in and out of the sectarian clergy, who knew the real state of the case, had made this deliberate choice; and the great mass of the god-fearing, honest, upright and sincere non-catholic population had left themselves be deceived by these rascals into the belief that it was simply a question of resisting the "encroachments of Rome."

If they let the deception go on, they shall be guilty before god of the spiritual death of thousands of the true children of the soil; the blood of those whom our fathers had redeemed from Paganism at the cost of innumerable hardships and even of life itself, would be upon our heads. many of the Indians were long ago by force of fraud despoiled of their faith and virtue, and we must not let the same fate befall the rest.

The Indian Advocate went on to report in 1896, "Let those who are in a position to collect and publish the true inside details of the infamous conspiracy from beginning to end, do so with all the energy and zeal and skill they can command; and let every Catholic and patriotic organ from one end of the country to the other proclaim with no uncertain sound that the present issue is by no means a question between Catholicism and Protestantism, but simply a question of religious liberty and human justice for the Indians. The Christian Indians have a right to practice the religion they prefer; and all the Indians, whether Christian or not, have a right to be instructed and civilized by god-fearing and honest men, instead of by mercenary underlings who are to often devoid of all religion or make their religion a cloak for their own flagrant iniquities."

It continues, "Let every honest man, and every citizen, regardless of creed, who is jealous for the honor of his country, ponder well this dark and damning record of crime and outrage, and let him disseminate a knowledge of it among all with whom he comes in contact. Let the further question be put squarely before the people, whether they are willing to have vast sums of government money recklessly squandered, in order to satisfy the prejudices of the A. P. A., and enrich a host of boodles at the expense of a positive retrogression in the condition of the indian wars of the nation."

They appended the names of those senators who on June 4 placed themselves on record as enemies of religious liberty by voting against the Indian denominational schools, that they may be held up to the opprobrium they deserved.

Republicans -- Chandler, Clark, Crown, Dubois, Gallinger, Lodge, Mitchell of Oregon, Morrill, Platt, Quay, Sewell, Teller, Warren and Wilson. Democrats -- George. Populists -- Butler and Peffer.
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