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Newspaper Page Text
wTixnWNatyi wfyPtgiiipy"' ywnwmwiwi Fhe Indian Advocate. . 110 the past half-hundred years shows an ever decreasing tally, whose souls should be all the dearer to us because like the setting sun on their own boundless prairies, the disappearing children of the forest are silently, patiently, stoically sinking beneath the horizon into that bourn whence no traveller returns. Hence we let the Indians speak for themselves; artlessly and touohingly so. Their voice seems the re-echo of the ever-to-be-remembered appeal of Logan, so of ted heard -and read in our childhood. The above mentioned petition reads as follows: "We, the undersigned, etc., respectfully beg to state, that our school fund has been permanently withdrawn from us, by the Department, which was formerly given to the Sac red Heart Indian School, for the education of our children. We might send our children to Government schools, but many of our people are strictly conscientious in the faith they have been brought up in and fear the result, that, were their chil dren given an education in non-Catholic institutions, the chil dren would soon lose their Catholic Faith and turn out indif ferent or infidel. Experience has taught many of our people of the consequence that would ensue. In 1875, we invited the Benedictine Fathers into our then Reservation to establish a church for our people and a school for our children. To en courage them, we donated them 640 acres of land for church, school and farming purposes, and pledged them our support in every manner. They had already learned that we were a Catholic Indian tribe from Kansas under Fathers Gaillandand Hcecken, and in Indiana and Michigan under Petit and Stephen Badin, the first ordained priest in the United States, and they even traced the unwavering faith of our forefathers to the days of Father Allcez, and these Benedictine Fathers with unabid ing faith in the integrity of our people, came into our reser vation and at great hardship and expense to themselves had in a few years built a monument of civilization called Sacred Heart Mission, which is now the pride of our part of the 'UtXtHk.'-f1- "-JtHMAtafkr. ....... ifc J