The Indian Advocate. (Sacred Heart Mission, Okla. Terr.), Vol. 6, No. 3, Ed. 1, Sunday, July 1, 1894 Page: 4 of 24
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TfZ77 INDIAN ADVOCATE.
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Father Stephan says that the mpst
vehement of tliose who demand the
secularization of Indian education are
to be found among the most narrow
class secretaries and that their insist-
ance upon the secular theory of education
is not ingenious but is only a cloak for
ulterior designs of practically sectarian
character.
He believes it to be the universal
judgment of all competent persons who
have been brought in contact with the
Indian problem that its solution in re-
spect of Indian civilization is impossible
upon a strictly non-religious basis. To
civilize the Indian to awaken and
vivify his moral nature he must be
brought to an understanding of the
existence the power the omnipresence
omniscience and the perfect justice and
goodness of the Supreme Being. Some
sort of religious education becomes
necessary to the Indian as a basis upon
which to rear a fabric of general
knowledge sufficient to qualify him as
a member of civilized society.
God forbid further says Father
Stephan that I should find fault with
any honest effort to Christianize the
Indians. "What I do object to is that
the effort now being made to secularize
to "non-sectarize" the Indian schools
is a dishonest hypocritical one whose
sole aim and purpose it is to drive the
Catholic Church out of the Indian edu-
cational and missionary field in which
it has gained glorious laurels and to
substitute for its influence and teach-
ings that of other religious bodies.
The contracts for the Indian schools
are made either with the corporal bodies
or individuals of given religious de-
nominations. The denominational contract schools
are not only good but economical.
While the Government pays on most of
the contracts from $108 to $125 and
only in a few cases $150 per capita per
annum and this strictly for only those
children who actually attend the Gov
ernment schools as the record shows
cost at least $300 (and often over) per
capita per annum in addition to salaries
of teachers which form a fixed charge
whether the attendance of pupils be 1
or 100. It is a fact which the records
of the Indian Office will demonstrate
that the Government schools have all
proven relatively expensive and some
of them otherwise objectionable.
A cry is raised of late by certain re-
ligious anarchists who call upon the
country to behold how much public
money the Catholic Church is drawing
from the National treasury for the sup-
port of sectarian Indian schools. The
hypocrisy the abject mendacity of this
cry must be too apparent to your body
to demand exposure at my hands but
it is one which appears to have secured
a hearing and in places a following
among people uninformed or misin-
formed as to the truth of the matter.
These professed enemies of religious
education are careful to conceal the
fact that the money is not public money
but it is Indian money the little all of
a tangible nature that the poor rod men
have left of all their once vast posses-
sions. The duty on the part of the
Government to use it for the benefit of
the Indians in the most economical
manner possible the further and no
less plain and important duty to use it
with reasonable deference to the wishes
of the Indians themselves are never
mentioned by these "non-sectarian"
adversaries. It does not come out of
the National treasury and it does not
go to the Church. The schools under
the auspices of the Church are paid a
certain small allowance per capita per
annum every cent of which and more
has been and is necessarily spent in the
feeding clothing nursing and training
of the Indian children.
The buildings other improvements
facilities salaries of teachers matrons
etc. havo been freely contributed by
this much-abused Church or its mem-
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The Indian Advocate. (Sacred Heart Mission, Okla. Terr.), Vol. 6, No. 3, Ed. 1, Sunday, July 1, 1894, newspaper, July 1, 1894; Sacred Heart Mission, Oklahoma Territory. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc69755/m1/4/?rotate=270: accessed March 18, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.