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Newspaper Page Text
13. V .THE OGLALA LIGHT a visitor to come into a tepee and depart without helping himself to, or receiving, some slight token of regard or affection, Many an Indian has been considered a thief when he picked up some trifle in a white man's home when he thought that in carrying it always he was doing honor to his host. If that white man went to that Indian's tepee and departed without availing himself of some trinket as a remembrance he would have been consider unfriendly or at least impolite. In consequence of this communal spirit there are no homeless orphans among the Indians. Parentless little ones are taking into tepees where their are already a number of children and no great -supply of food and the utmost self-denial is practised that morsel may be given to each person. I have seen several examples of the caring for aged people by those bound to them only by tribal ties, not at all by direct relationship or blood. I know a young Indian couple who, besides fighting the 'battle for bread" for themselves, have volunta rily assumed the support of three old women whose husbands and children have died. When the last one was taken into the already crowded tepee—she was a half-blinded old soul, misshapen in body land by no means lovely of disposition—the young wife said with a smile "Ours is a Jesus-home now. We have in it the poor and the blind." Indeed, it was and is at this moment a Jesus-home. Undoubtedly this crude socialism, of which I am speaking, has done mischief as well as good. It has tended to destroy individual effort, thrift, and economy. Opponents of the wide socialism—civic, state, or national in scope, need not go farther than our Indian tribes to find arguments with which to combat the splendid but illusive dream. It is fostered laziness, it is developed pauperism, and in many it has debased social usages. This is true, although the great $st agent of debasement of the Indian in all outward respects and ^nany inward one have been our own short sighted policy in dealing with him. Another result of crude socialism is on intense tribal pride. With in the limits of each particular tribe there are few social distinctions #ach Arapahoe, for instance, considers every other Arapahoe as good as himself and by the same token a little better than a member Of most other tribes. There are few aristocratic individuals but there are acknowledged aristocratic tribes. Even the chiefs and