Susanne K. George

Professor Bloomfield

English 246

26 April 2000

Native American Autobiography as Captivity Narrative

Horror stories of Indians and their captives abound in American literature.1 First brought to the attention of the public by the Mathers, both Increase and Cotton, these early narratives instantly caught the public's attention. With their typical emphasis on the brutal slayings and kidnappings of innocent pioneers to their horrific scenes of mutilation, deprivation, and sexual abuse, they appealed to a society who firmly believed in the natural depravity of man and acknowledged the abiding presence of evil in the world.

According to Segal and Stineback in Puritans and Manifest Destiny, "to the Puritan, the Native American was the instrument of Satan" and his "struggle against sin was, in part, a struggle against Satan as personified by the Indian" (49). Thus, early settlers could rationalize all actions toward Indians, including western expansionism and extermination, as crusades under God's command.

The narratives changed over time, explains Roy Harvey Pearce in "Significances of the Captivity Narrative," from religious documents and spiritual confessions to fictionalized and sensationalized accounts. Their purposes also changed, from symbolic spiritual journeys to propaganda espousing Manifest Destiny, until by the end of the eighteenth century, they simply became melodramatic entertainment. Later, anthropologists and historians collected captivity narratives as scholarship, although some were more objective than others, "to see what [they] revealed about the frontier and frontiersman, to broaden the scope of the American historical imagination" (17).

By the end of the nineteenth century, notes Frederick Drimmer in Captured by the Indians, as Native Americans were safely herded onto reservations, the tribes exchanged "the role of the threatening, hostile raider for that of the peaceful farmer and herdsman," and "the captivity narrative began to die out and disappear." He adds, "This is a shame" (10).

I would like to argue that the captivity narrative did not disappear at this time, but that the sides merely reversed roles. No longer were the Indians the captors, but the captives. Their autobiographies detailing their lives within the confines of the reservations and their forced acculturation to the white man's ways should be considered as captivity narratives, too.2

Ironically, early American reformers, in their humanitarian zeal, did not consider their efforts to acculturate Native Americans as cruelty, again looking to religion as rationalization for their actions. These idealists believed that education, acceptance of the Christian faith, and assimilation to the white culture were the only means to "save" the Indians. Although the first school for Indians was founded in Havana, Cuba, in 1568, the period most crucial for the western Indian nations occurred after the Civil War.3 At this time, Christian reformers, many of them military leaders such as Richard Henry Pratt and O.O. Howard, were convinced that education promised the quickest and best road to assimilation. They developed or advocated schools like the Carlisle, Hampton, and Forest Grove Institutes that would remove Native American children from the "degrading influences" of their tribal communities and teach them the ways of the white man.4

Pratt, whose frontier years with the Cavalry brought him into close association with units of freed Negro slaves and Indian scouts, developed the philosophy that, for these minority citizens, "The rights of citizenship included fraternity and equal privileges for development"(xi). All that minority groups needed to be able to compete on equal terms in the white community was education, concluding that once Native American children could speak, read, and write English, they would adjust to the civilized world. Pratt boasted, "I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked"(xv). Although his humanitarian concerns were noble, he did not consider how much human suffering that his attempt to eradicate an entire culture would cost.

An old cavalry barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, served as the first school for the young Native Americans, and the first session began in 1879 with more than two hundred children from about half a dozen tribes. Later off-reservation schools began in Nebraska, Kansas, Oregon, and in Indian territory, patterning themselves after Carlisle.

That the school should begin in a military barracks was appropriate, for it became a sort of prison to children sent there. Torn from their parents and their culture, the Native American youths suffered loneliness, fear, hunger, and abuse in the name of Progress. Alice Poindexter Fisher, in The Transformation of Tradition, notes the traumatic impact these schools had on their captive pupils:

Many Native Americans chronicle in their autobiographies the poignant events of their captivity in the white man's schools. Among the most respected are those of Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin), 1921, Francis La Flesche, 1900, Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa),1916, and Luther Standing Bear, 1928.5 Their personal accounts of their "captivities" in the missionary schools follow nearly the same pattern as those of the traditional captivity narratives, such as the one written by Mary Rowlandson after her 1675 kidnapping. The narratives begin with an account of the capture, a narrative of the journey to their place of captivity, a report of their cultural displacement in an alien society, and an expose of the sufferings and cruelties they endured, and they conclude with a description of the return to their own society. The emotional and psychological scars inflicted upon Indian children during their "schooling" were as serious as those abhorred by the reading public in the traditional Indian captivity narratives.

The most horrifying aspect of the traditional captivity narratives is their description of the capture. Mary Rowlandson pictured the Indian raid and her kidnapping in her account:

The "capture" of the Native American children was no less emotional than that of the white captives, although false promises, not physical force, often lured many away from their parents. In Zitkala-Sa's American Indian Stories, missionaries came and told the children of "a more beautiful country than ours"(39) where they could "pick all the red apples [they] could eat"(41-42). Zitkala-Sa's mother warned her about "the white man's lies," saying, "Don't believe a word they say! Their words are sweet, but, my child, their deeds are bitter. You will cry for me, but they will not even soothe you. Stay with me, my little one! Your brother Dawee says that going East, away from your mother, is too hard an experience for his sister"(41). Not until later did Zitkala-Sa lament, "Alas! They came, they saw, and they conquered!"(41). Family members left behind mourned the losses intensely, too. Zitkala-Sa's mother's loud cries pierced the night: "She cried aloud for her brothers' spirits to support her in her helpless misery"(74).

Others had no other alternative but to allow the white soldiers and missionaries to take their children now that their traditional lifestyle had been altered. Francis LaFlesche recounted the incident of an old grandmother and an orphan boy she brought to the school. No longer able to care for him or herself, she said, "I beg that he be treated kindly." Then, "the poor creature, with tears streaming down her furrowed cheeks, limped out of the room. When the little boy recovered from his bewilderment and found that the old woman had left, he "gave a piteous wail, and fell to the floor, sobbing violently"(133).

When the false promises and temptations didn't work, the agencies relied on threats. Pratt himself would come out to the agencies and "coax or bully the Sioux parents into letting him take their boys to his big school, some place in the white men's land, far away. Many Sioux had little respect for Pratt, knowing that "he knew only one method of negotiation--that which he used in dealing with recalcitrant Indian boys at Carlisle. The moment anyone opposed his will [he] grew angry."6 When Red Cloud's camp refused to send their seventy-five children to the Pine Ridge school, Major V.T. McGillycuddy petitioned "the Indian Office for permission to cut off from the ration rolls all families in Red Cloud's camp that refused to put their children in school." He obtained permission to begin starving the Indians into submission in 1885.7 Orphans helped filled the school quotas when promises, threats, and starvation attempts failed.

Other children were literally kidnapped. Angie Debo, in A History of the Indians of the United States, explains:

Even in the reservation schools they children were not safe from kidnappers. When Angel DeCora, a Winnebago, was in class one day, stange men entered the room and through translators, asked her if she would like to ride on a train. The prospect excited her, so she and six other children agreed to leave with the white men. Angel related, "We did get the promised ride. We rode three days and three nights until we reached Hampton, Va. My parents found out, but too late."8 Hampton Institute added seven new names to their roll call that week, seven unsuspecting children kidnapped against their families' wills.

The inevitable capture of the Indian children was preceded by years of battles as bloody as those described by Rowlandson, battles begun early in the westward expansion as trappers, traders, miners, and settlers raided the Indians' lands. Many Native American parents resisted the missionaries' attempts to educate their children in the white culture; those parents who knew that the ability to speak, read, and write English would be essential for their children and were willing to send them away to school understood all too well that the means to achieve this end would have disastrous effects on their children and their culture.

In all traditional captivity narratives, the captives are torn from their familiar environment and taken on a journey to an unknown or unfamiliar destination. As Rowlandson began her Second Remove, she lamented, "I must turn my back upon the town and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness, I knew not whither"(62) while the Indians taunted her saying, "'your master will knock your child in the head,' and then a second, and then a third,' your master will quickly knock your child in the head'"(64). The children's journeys to the unknown held as much anxiety and hardship for them as it did for Rowlandson. Their travels away from the safety of their families terrified the young Native Americans, and the sight of the large steamboats and hooting trains as well as the hundreds of rude spectators caused many of them to fear for their lives. Luther Standing Bear, the first male student to step inside the grounds at Carlisle, viewed himself as a captive as he recalled the scene of the "eighty-odd blanketed boys and girls marching down the street surrounded by a jeering, unsympathetic people whose only emotions were those of hate and fear; the conquerors looking upon the conquered"(Spotted Eagle 232).

For most of the Indian children, their journey began with a ride on the unfamiliar steam locomotive. Standing Bear described his fear at eleven years old during the train ride when "suddenly the whole house started to move away with us . . . We expected every minute that the house would tip over, and that something terrible would happen. We held our blankets between our teeth, because our hands were both busy hanging to the seats, so frightened were we"(128-129). However, real fear for their lives soon replaced anxiety as the train rushed closer and closer to the East where the Native Americans believed the earth ended, for they had been taught that the earth was flat with four corners. "The big boys were now singing brave songs" and they "expected to be killed because [they[ had passed the moon"(131-132). Standing bear went East, as did many Indian children, expecting to die.

The trip on the "iron road" to the new schools was the first shock to many young Native Americans. Zitkala-Sa also described her traumatic journey:

In nearly every autobiography, Indian children, taught by their families to modestly and respectfully avert their eyes, mentioned the trauma inflicted upon them by the staring and contemptuous looks of the white crowds.

The arrival at the large, wooden army barracks and schoolhouses did not comfort the children, either. La Flesche described his first day, using the detached third person: "Everything seemed to be in a whirl. He took fright, ran to the door that first caught his sight, and went with a thud down to a landing, but did not lose his balance; he took another step, then fell headlong into a dreadful dark place. He screamed at the top of his voice, frightened almost into a fit"(5). Zitkala-Sa, too, described her terror: "trembling with fear and distrust of the palefaces, my teeth chattering from the chilly ride, I crept noiselessly in my soft moccasins along the narrow hall, keeping very close to the bare wall. I was as frightened as the captured young of a wild creature"(45). Her fear did not lessen as the days went by: "My body trembled more from fear than from the snow I trod upon. . . . As I did not hush my crying, one of the older ones whispered to me, 'Wait until you are alone in the night'" (49-50). Needing compassion, she begged for her mother, but "the ears of the palefaces could not hear me"(50).

Although the journeys of these young Indians were often not as physically grueling as those of the white captives, the children's sense of displacement, isolation, and their actual fear of dying equaled that of their counterparts.

Adapting to a foreign culture presented additional hardships to captives. Different types of lodging, food, and clothing made their confinements more stressful. During Rowlandson's captivity, the Indian's diet appalled her the most:

Although the Native American children slowly adjusted to the "paleface days," as Zitkala-Sa termed them, they had more to adapt to than the food. Anxious to remove all traces of "savagery" from their new charges, white educators and missionaries tried to strip and clip and scrub their children's Indianness away, committing emotionally harmful actions toward the youngsters.

The cutting of the boys' and girls' hair universally caused the most trauma among the children and parents alike. Zitkala-Sa lamented the loss of her Indian individuality when the girls' glossy, black hair was cut. Among Native Americans, short hair was only worn by mourners, and "shingled hair by cowards"(54). Zitkala-Sa tried to escape, but she was caught and tied securely in a chair:

When Standing Bear's turn came in the barber's chair, he stated that "it hurt my feelings to such an extent that it made tears come to my eyes. I do not recall whether the barber noticed my agitation or not, not did I care. All I was thinking about was the hair that he had taken away from me." He then realized that he was no longer an Indian, but only "an imitation of a white man"(My People 141).

The children were not alone in her anguish, for when chief Red Cloud accompanied his daughter to the school at the Pine Ridge agency and saw the white women cutting the sacred scalplocks of the young boys, he immediately withdrew her. These scalplocks were "the Sioux badge of honor, a boy deprived of that lock would never amount to anything and would soon become a social outcast."9

Next, the children's blankets and clothing were taken from them and replaced by outfits Standing bear considered "cumbersome and awkward." Moreover, he believed that trousers and handkerchiefs were "unsanitary and the trousers kept us from breathing well. High collars, stiff-bosomed shirts, and suspenders fully three inches in width were uncomfortable, while leather boots caused actual suffering". The red flannel undergarments Standing Bear considered as "actual torture"(Spotted Eagle 232-233). Missionaries forced them into tightly fitting clothes which, Zitkala-Sa recalled, made her feel "immodestly dressed"(53).

The clothing issued the children were often ragged hand-me-downs. Charles Eastman described his first glimpse of the "civilized" Indian children at the Santee agency mission school in Nebraska, headed by Dr. Alfred L. Riggs, superintendent: "They all had on some apology for white man's clothing . . . Their coats, some of them, met only half-way by the help of strings. Other were lapped over in front, and held on by a string of some sort fastened around the body. Some of the hats were brimless and others without crowns"(21).

Next, they were given English names, thus erasing their identity. La Flesche explained, "the aboriginal names were considered by the missionaries as heathenish, and therefore should be obliterated. No less heathenish in their origin were the English substitutes, but the loss of their original meaning and significance through long usage had rendered them fit to continue as appellations for civilized folk"(xvii).

Whereas Indian names had personal or symbolic connotations and ceremonies often accompanied the ritual of naming, the English names forced upon the children at the schools were chosen randomly with no connection to their individuality. Standing Bear pointed out his name from a list on the blackboard he could not read. He explained, "None of the names were read or explained to us, so of course we did not know the sound or the meaning of any of them." When the teacher handed him the pointer, Standing bear said, "I took the pointer and acted as if I were about to touch an enemy"(My People 137). He considered his action a heroic act, a sort of "coup" on the enemy.

Finally, the missionaries prohibited the Indian children from speaking their own language, a rule, stated La Flesche, which was "rigidly enforced with a hickory rod, so that the new-comer, however socially inclined, was obliged to go about like a little dummy until he had learned to express himself in English"(xvii). This harsh rule, especially in the first months when children were undergoing major cultural and personal adjustments, caused much emotional isolation. Standing Bear explained, "I now remembered how hard it had been for us to forego the consolation of speech. I remembered how lonely we used to get and how we longed for the loved ones at home, and the taking away of speech at that time only added to our depression. Those of us who knew the sign language made use of it, but imagine what it meant to those who had to remain silent"(Spotted Eagle 242). With this one rule, the silencing of an individual, educators moved effectively toward silencing an entire culture.

The young children also had difficulty adjusting to the white man's food, considering it as unpalatable as the white captives described the Indian cuisine. When Zitkala-Sa was sent to the kitchen to mash the turnips for dinner, she related, "I hated turnips, and their odor which came from the brown jar was offensive to me"(60). She mashed them with so much vengeance that the bottom of the jar broke out and all of the turnips spilled to the floor. However, no one had to eat turnips for that meal. Standing Bear believed that "Of all the changes we were forced to make, that of diet was doubtless the most injurious, for it was immediate and drastic. White bread we had for the first meal and thereafter, as well as coffee and sugar. Had we been allowed our own simple diet of meat, either boiled with soup or dried, and fruit, with perhaps a few vegetables, we should have thrived." With weakened bodies and souls, it is no wonder that within the first three years of school, "nearly one half of the children from the Plains were dead"(Spotted Eagle 234).

The children's days were regimented by a system of bells, and strict military order governed their every move. Zitkala-Sa explained how this new culture distressed her: "A large bell rang for breakfast, its loud metallic voice crashing through the belfry overhead and into our sensitive ears. The annoying clatter of shoes on bare floors gave us no peace. . . And though my spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless"(52). Eastman summed up the feelings of these culturally displaced youngsters, stripped of their hair, their clothing, their names, their language, and their health, when he exclaimed: "I felt like a wild goose with its wings clipped" (44).

Readers of captivity narratives shudder at the cruelties, oftentimes exaggerated or sensationalized, that Indians inflicted upon their white captives. Mary Rowlandson described this incident in her travail when she was hungry and went to visit a kind Indian woman who had once given her food: When I was there, there came an Indian to look after me, who when he found me, kicked me all along. I went home and found venison roasting that night, but they would not give me one bit of it." Rowlandson explained, "Sometimes I met with favor, and sometimes with nothing but frowns"(74). Although Rowlandson's physical torments do not compare in degree with the cruelties of some other white captives, they are probably more indicative of the treatment that most white captives received at the hands of their Indian captors.

Native American children endured equally cruel physical oppression and neglect. Uncompassionate teachers demanded rigid adherence to rules and inflicted unnecessarily harsh corporal punishment. Absenteeism was not allowed, "No matter if a dull headache or the painful cough of slow consumption had delayed the absentee," stated Zitkala-Sa. "It was next to impossible to leave the iron routine after the civilizing machine had begun its day's buzzing"(66).

Discipline was swift and relentless, and often the Indian children, unfamiliar with white customs or unable to speak or understand English, did not comprehend why they were being hurt. La Flesche and a friend, who were attending the Presbyterian Indian Mission School north of Omaha, Nebraska, were punished for joining an annual summer buffalo hunt during vacation. His friend was locked in the attic, a black hole the children believed was haunted by devils and ghosts, where he was to reflect upon the wrongs he had committed. La Flesche explained that for his punishment, he was

Later, La Flesche and his friends were caught in an innocent boyish prank and punished even more severely:

However, the worse cruelty inflicted by the teachers at the Mission School La Flesche attended occurred when the young orphan brought by the grandmother accidentally hit the teacher with a clod of dirt: "Catching a firm grip on the hand of the boy, Gray-beard dealt blow after blow on the visibly swelling hand. The man seemed to lose all self-control, gritting his teeth and breathing heavily, while the child writhed in pain, turned blue, and lost his breath." This was the child to whom the missionaries had promised to be kind. La Flesche was horrified and unable "to reconcile the act of Gray-beard with the teachings of the missionaries"(138).

When the leading Sioux chiefs Red Cloud, Red Dog, and Spotted Tail visited Carlisle in 1880, they were angry at the educational program, for they wished their children to be taught to speak, read, and write English, not work as drudges in the fields. The physical punishment the youngsters received also incensed them. According to George E. Hyde in A Sioux Chronicle, the chiefs were incensed at the "thugs on the staff whose duty it was to beat the pupils." The Native American leaders could not understand how Christian people in the East could approve of Pratt's plan when "they knew that he had men and women on his payroll under the euphemistic designation of disciplinarians whose main duty was to thump recalcitrant Indian boys and girls into submission." A bill was introduced into Congress to halt such beatings at Indian schools, but Pratt personally went to Washington to fight it and won, delaying its passage for twenty-five years(57).

Even though corporal punishment was not uncommon even in white boarding schools, and many teachers were dedicated and compassionate individuals, the cause for the severe discipline was unique. Teachers routinely disciplined Indian children for speaking their native language, for singing Indian songs, for not understanding English, and, as a consequence, for running away from school. When compared to the traditionally lenient upbringing of most Indian children, such harsh physical punishment for previously approved behavior was alien and incomprehensible.

Most appalling, however, were the great numbers of children who died from disease, neglect, starvation, and even homesickness at the Indian schools. LaGrippe, Whooping Cough, smallpox, pulmonary diseases, and tuberculosis spread rapidly in the crowded schoolrooms and dormitories. Zitkala-Sa, even as a child, understood the lack of medical resources and attention, stating," I grew bitter, and censured the woman for cruel neglect of our physical ills" (67). Later, when Zitkala-Sa was a teacher herself at Carlisle, she understood more clearly the woeful medical conditions at the school: "An inebriate paleface sat stupid in a doctor's chair, while Indian patients carried their ailments to untimely graves"(95). Traditional Native Americans, like Eastman's grandmother, when hearing of her grandson's distress at the Indian school, blamed the parents for departing from the tribal ways: "Many of the school-children have died, you have told me. It is not strange. You have offended Him, because you have made the children change the ways he has given us"(24-25).

The sufferings and cruelties forced upon the uncomprehending Native American children were all the more tragic since the pain was consciously inflicted by a society who prided itself in its democracy, superiority, and Christian charity.

The reunion of white captives with their families and friends was usually accompanied by rejoicing and thankfulness, and most were welcomed wholeheartedly back into the community. Rowlandson spoke of "pitiful, tender-hearted and compassionate Christians," "tenderhearted friends," "Bounty and religious charity," and "public thanksgiving" at her return (90-91). Although she mourned the loss of loved ones killed during the attack, the ordeal taught her "the vanity of . . . outward things" and that "we must rely on God Himself, and our whole dependence must be upon him"(96). As a result of her captivity, she considered herself now one of the "elect" and had an important role to fulfill in her community: to write an account of her captivity that would serve as an example for others to appreciate the goodness of God and not stray from the Puritan paths of righteousness.

When the Native American children returned to their families and villages, the restored captives were not greeted with celebrations, but suspicion. Traditional members of their own tribes considered them as outcasts and looked upon them, stated La Flesche, as "make-believe white men," neither white nor Indian (23). "Some of the boys came back years later, turned into imitation whites, and most of them were unhappy," states Hyde in A Sioux Chronicle . "Some died off there in the white men's land and were never seen again"(189).

As a result, the newly-acculturated Indians were unable to fit back into their own societies. Zitkala-Sa explained, "Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one. This deplorable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East"(69). In her story of the "Soft-Hearted Sioux," a young Christian returned to his tribe, and the medicine man taunted, "What loyal son is he who, returning to his father's people, wears a foreigner's dress? . . . Here is the traitor to his people"(117).

Tragically, many boys and girls returned home complete strangers to their families. Standing Bear reported:

He described the sad spectacle of returned children who could no longer speak their native language, or pretended they could not out of shame, and who turned to "deception and trickery"(Spotted Eagle 235). They became like the young men in Zitkala-Sa's autobiographical tale "The Blue-Star Woman," tricksters who preyed on the old, the uneducated, and the helpless and who "thrived in their grafting business. . . . the by-product of an unwieldy bureaucracy over the nation's wards"(168). Somehow, one cannot blame those who stayed behind for their disapproval.

More unfortunate, the white world still regarded the educated Indians as inferior and did not allow them the "fraternity and equal privileges" Pratt and other assimilationists had envisioned. Zitkala-Sa described white men and women as "a cold race whose hearts were frozen hard with prejudice"(76).

In 1890 Standing Bear and a group of other students returned from Carlisle held a council meeting to discuss "what could be done with the education [they] had received at the institution and which [they] had found useless to [them] on the reservation"(239). Fifteen of them decided that each should open a little shop if the government would give them the necessary tools. Standing Bear believed, "This seemed to us a splendid idea for keeping the knowledge which we had gained at school and which was supposed to fit us for civilian life. So we drew up a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs"(240). Much to their disappointment, the Commissioner ignored their request. Even the Indians who had positions within the white system on their own reservations, such as Zitkala-Sa's brother Dawee, lost them to white men: "the Great Father at Washington sent a white son to take [her] brother's pen from him," and he was not able to make use of his Eastern education(90).

Many Native Americans continued on to college. Eastman graduated from Dartmouth College and went on to receive a medical degree at Boston University. He began his practice at the Pine Ridge Indian agency in Nebraska; however, when he exposed fradulant practices at the agency, he was charged as insubordinate and forced to resign. When he attempted to establish a medical practice at St. Paul, Minnesota, after being one of the few to pass the medical examination for that state, he complained that "I was persistently solicited for illegal practice, and this by persons who were not only intelligent, but apparently of good social standing"(137). Eastman refused such illegal solicitations as well as the tempting offers to perform "Indian treatments." Thus, the education that the white man promised would transform the Indian into a full member of civilized society proved worthless, in the white world as well as on their own reservations.

Indian families, of course, rejoiced at the return of their once-captive sons and daughters, but the dramatic changes affected upon their children and the emotional and physical scars they brought back home with them made the homecomings tragic.

Captivity narratives written by early white settlers and Native American autobiographies record the parallel experiences of whites captured by Indians and forced to lived within the tribal communities and of Indians captured by whites and held against their wills in the white educational facilities. Just as some of the white captives assimilated into the Indian culture of their captors, so did many Native Americans, especially those children taken from their families at an early age. However, nearly all Indian autobiographies contain incidents which record the emotional, physical, and cultural abuses imposed upon them just as graphically as those described by white captives.

What sets the Indian narratives apart is their unrewarding return to society, either the white man's world or the Indian's, intensifying their cultural displacement. Zitkala-Sa summed up the effect of her captivity in white-run Indian schools: "But few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization"(99). Eastman was one who did question the worth of his acculturation and the values of civilized society: "I am an Indian; and while I have learned much from civilization, for which I am grateful, I have never lost my Indian sense of right and justice. I am for development and progress along social and spiritual lines, rather than those of commerce, nationalism, or material efficiency"(195).

Even Standing Bear, one of those who succeeded in the white world, felt so strongly about the harm done to him, his fellow students, and his culture that it caused him to resolve: "if today I had a young mind to direct, to start on the journey of life, and I was faced with the duty of choosing between the natural way of my forefathers and that of the white man's present way of civilization, I would, for its welfare, unhesitatingly set that child's feet in the path of my forefathers. I would raise him to be an Indian"(Spotted Eagle 258).

Ironically, another reversal is currently taking place. Despite all of the efforts of early reformers to erase the Indian culture, their traditions and tribal identity still survive. Today, many in the white community are looking to the Native American culture to ease an increasing sense of alienation and to help them establish a new set of values, especially concerning humanity's relationship with the environment. Standing Bear believed that "The attempted transformation of the Indian by the white man and the chaos that has resulted are but the fruits of the white man's disobedience of a fundamental and spiritual law"(Spotted Eagle 248). That law, he explained, encompassed "an intense and absorbing love for nature; a respect for life; enriching faith in a Supreme Power; and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations" (Spotted Eagle 247). Perhaps a new society that respects differences and does not attempt to control could grow out of just such a law.

Notes

1 Throughout my research, I discovered conflicting preferences in the use of the terms "Indian," "First Americans," (Oppelt), "Native American," "American Indian" (McBeth), and "Indians of North America" (Library of Congress). The terms will be used synonymously throughout the following pages because "no one term is preferred by all First Americans" (Oppelt ix). My preference would be the tribal name; however, as much of my discussion includes Indians from diverse tribes, this approach would not be applicable.

2 In Land of the Spotted Eagle, Luther Standing Bear describes the captivity-like existence of Indians on the reservations as well as his experiences at Carlisle.

3 Oppelt presents a thorough history of the "Historic Antecedents of Contemporary Indian High Education" in his first chapter on the missionary period.

4 Dinges, writing in the Introduction of O.O. Howard's Famous Indian Chiefs I Have Known, remarks that although Howard's military career was marked by sincere humanitarian effort, he shared the same misplaced beliefs of his contemporaries in believing that there was nothing in the Native American culture worth saving.

5 All Indian autobiographies, of course, are not negative in their attitudes toward their school experiences. Many, such as LaFlesche, after surviving the initial culture shock, found the experience rewarding, just as many whites captured by Indians, chose not to go back to the white civilization.

6 Hyde 189.

7 Hyde 102 and Milligan 111.

8 Brumble 226.

9 Hyde 100.