quate organ of spiritual life, the one that would certainly come first would be a change away from sectarianism, and a narrow denominationalism, and in the direction of complete Christian cooperation. Missionaries who are to go out in the future ought to leave all their sectarian baggage behind * In our own country the fatal effect of sectarian quarrels and bickering has been strikingly shown by Helen Hunt Jackson in her epoch-making book, A Century of Dishonor, page 123: In this year [1870] a commission was sent to Oregon to hold council with the band of Nez Percés occupying Wallowa Valley, in Oregon, "with a view to their removal, if practicable, to the Nez Percé Reservation in Idaho. They reported this removal to be impracticable, and the Wallowa Valley has been withdrawn from sale and set apart for their use and occupation by Executive order." 99 19 This commission reported that one of the most troublesome problems in governmental control of Indian affairs in Idaho was the strife between different sects (p. 124): To illustrate this, they quote Chief Joseph's reason for not wishing schools on his reservation. He was the chief of the nontreaty band of Nez Percés occupying the Wallowa Valley, in Oregon: "Do you want schools and schoolhouses on the Wallowa Reservation?" asked the commissioners. JOSEPH. "No; we do not want schools or schoolhouses on the Wallowa Reservation." COMMISSIONER. "Why do you not want schools?" JOSEPH. "They will teach us to have churches." COMMISSIONER. "Why do you not want churches?" We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that." Mr. Frank C. Churchill, a special agent of the Interior Department, was deputed to investigate the conditions of education and school service in Alaska, and in his extensive report on this subject, in 1906, spoke thus of the evils of sectarianism in Alaskan schools. and missions (p. 13): That there may be no mistake, it should at once be put down emphatically that nearly every color of religious faith is represented in some way in the schools or missions in Alaska. Sectarianism in the school work has been prominent from the first, and it has resulted in creating denominational controversies or jealousies here and there, as it might have been expected that whatever a paid agent of one denomination, clothed with authority to disburse public funds, might do to establish new schools, his acts would be brought into question, and when those of his own church were placed on the Government pay roll it is not strange that the feeling should be more or less common that denominational favoritism has prevailed, proving that mixing up church and Government matters along financial lines is not ad visable in view of results Showing the pitiable effects which sectarianism has brought to Metlakahtla, the following is quoted from a statement of Casper Mather, a Tsimshean native, made on August 5, 1916: * Now when I learn many things, I find different kinds of Chris tians-don't know what it means. I don't know many things. I don't know what they mean. The Methodist come-no, it was the Presbyterian, they come; they say, we only go church. Then, the Salvation Army, they say that all wrong-other church. No good there; then come the Methodists, they say they alright-other no good. Then there come the Roman Catholic; they say, no other church, only our church any good. Then come the Seventh 19 Report of the Secretary of the Interior for 1873. Day Adventists, they say, we must believe their way, and he says, how can I know all the ways; he says, which is right: and then he appeal to me, and he says, which is right; which is? You stranger, you come far away, you know. Do you know what is right? The history of Christianity shows that the fury of politico-sectarian persecutions in many lands and in many ages has found its climax in martyrdom at the stake and bloodshed on the field of battle, but, though wrong may seem firmly enthroned, and able to put truth upon the scaffold Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God, within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. -James Russell Lowell. CHAPTER X. SLANDERS REFUTED SECTION 76. SLANDERS THROUGH FAKED PETITIONS AND WRITINGS INSPIRED BY BUREAU PLOTTERS Slanderous petitions and writings concocted by Marsden and Bureau agents. Official documents refute slanders. Faked petitions and fraudulent writings used by departmental committee in report to Secretary of Interior That conniving agents of the Government inspired attacks on Father Duncan and his mission school through the formulation and presentation of so-called petitions is clearly shown in chapter II: Intrigues; Section 21, Bureau Agents Cooperate in Use of Faked Native Petitions to Deceive Government, supra, page 310. SLANDEROUS PETITIONS AND WRITINGS CONCOCTED BY MARSDEN AND BUREAU AGENTS Among the first of these so-called native petitions was one dated January 2, 1908, which was concocted and written by Edward Marsden, one of Father Duncan's arch adversaries, who was not a resident of Metlakahtla, and who had long been in connivance with Bureau agents. In that petition Marsden made the alleged signers say: First. * The school methods and system [of Father Duncan] under which we have been, and are, living are antiquated, unbearable, and unAmerican. Second. The day school that is here, under the support and control of one man, is utterly unable to meet the demands of this native community and country. In forwarding that petition Marsden said in his letter of January 2, 1908, to Hon. Thomas Cale, Delegate from Alaska in Congress: I very heartily endorse the enclosed petition from the people of Metlakahtla, Alaska, and I trust that you will very kindly give it your earnest and immediate attention. I am one of the people from Metlakahtla, but for 10 years I have been here working among the Cape Fox and Tongass Tribes of Alaska Indians [at Saxman]. ** * *. And yet the "school methods and system" thus condemned were so efficient that they, with Father Duncan's religious teachings, had brought these Tsimsheans, including Edward Marsden's own father and grandfather, from debased savagery to a high state of Christian civilization, concerning which Marsden had written to Father Duncan in a letter dated May 2, 1894: Thanking you for the faithful performance of your duty and praying the Lord to be ever with you as in the dark days of northern B. C., when my father Samuel first came to the light and also grandfather, Peter Simpson. That representatives of the Bureau of Education were strongly inclined to inspire the slandering of Father Duncan has been shown in many instances, but the following statement will suffice here. Attached to the Lopp report seeking the intrusion of a Government school at Metlakahtla, was a defamatory letter purporting to have been written by Benjamin A. Haldane, a native, who, on June 15, 1921, subscribed and made oath to the following statement: Somewhere about the year 1909 [1910], when I was secretary of the Metlakahtla Alaska Council, I was instructed by the council to go to Seattle and petition the United States Government agent at Seattle, to place in Metlakahtla, the Government boarding school, which it had been announced was about to be established in Alaska, at that time. When we met Mr. Lopp at Seattle, we requested that the Government should establish the proposed boarding school for Alaska, at Metlakahtla. Mr. Lopp said to us, if you people will go back and extinguish the Duncan mission and all its work, we will then be able to help you, and your people will be able to get all you want. While we were in Seattle, Mr. Lopp spoke to me privately and asked me to gather up material and publish in various papers, all we could against Mr. Duncan, to show that Mr. Duncan's mission was a drawback and prevented the advancement of the people; but this I refused to do. This was the advice that we delegates took back to the people of Metlakahtla, Alaska, from Mr. Lopp, the Government agent, at Seattle. That this same Lopp was ever persistent in planting in the minds of these natives such slanders as he desired them to repeat, is shown by his letter of December 31, 1915, to William G. Beattie, the Bureau of Education's Superintendent of the Southeastern District of Alaska, in which he told of haranguing a largely attended public meeting in Metlakahtla for 24 hours, during which he declared to Beattie that he "warmed up", and "they surely got a strong dose of anti-Duncan dope." The general disposition of the Bureau's agents to promote slanderous petitions is further substantiated by records showing that Dr. Harry C. DeVighne, one of the Bureau's medical inspectors, personally carried one of these so-called native petitions for a school to Washington, D. C., for presentation to the Commissioner of Edu cation. Furthermore, we find evidence in Marsden's letter of July 3, 1914, to Beattie, that he (Marsden) had the sympathy and support of Government agents in his vicious attacks on Father Duncan. In that letter Marsden mentioned a "petition to be sent you tonight or tomorrow and which I have penned in a rather hurried way", and said: * * ** When you make a carbon copy of it for Mr. Lopp and yourself please make one extra for me as I do not retain a copy of it, and I wrote it on my boat. * * After stating the oft-repeated slanderous charge that Father Duncan withheld and appropriated to his own use property owned in part by the natives, that petition, which was to go to the Department of the Interior through both Beattie and Lopp, asked: * * the enforced and immediate retirement of Mr. William Duncan from Metlakahtla with what private property that legally belongs to himself, since within recent years he has only practiced in our midst the arts of a shrewd, merciless, trader and money tyrant, and has altogether forfeited his rights with us as a teacher of Christian righteousness and morality. The slanders directed against Father Duncan through faked petitions and writings inspired by Bureau plotters have been exposed under the subsection headings in Chapter II: Intrigues; Section 20, Government Handwriting Experts Disclose Forgery in So-called Native Petitions. [P. 18695.] |