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Show Indians and Nun Teachers. Addressing the Newman club" of Los Angeles', Cal., recently, Charles F. Lummis, the well known editor--and writer, who is not a Catholic, delivered a ringing address. Among other things he said;.'. The fact is that the Catholic Church and its schools are the pioneers in Indian education in America. It was not until -1807 that an English-speaking English-speaking person came to New Mexico. In 1617 there were eleven Catholic churches in New Mexico, and all had their Indian schools. The reason why I am opposed to this campaign (against Catholic Indian schools) is because these are the only schools I know of that are doing the Indians lasting good. Not because of the religion, which is nothing to me, although it is the Indians' religion to a great extent. I do not believe that one should be taken from his father's faith or his mother's faith for I the whim of a school teacher. I am judging by the long results. I have not known a child from a Catholic school who had forgotten his parents or his language. I have not known any of the girls that have gone wrong in the Indian towns to have come from a Catholic school. Not one ! But I have known a good many from Carlisle and other government gov-ernment -.schools. Go with me to that exquisitely neat and motherly school of Sister Margaret, at Bernalillo; go with me to the Albuquerque or M the Santa Fe school, and then let a man of the world judge which of those he would choose as a place for. his children. If there is anything in the world, though not a Catholic, that I revere, it is a Sister of Charity. There is something selfish in that administration as well as something of experience, for I have 1 known them for a long time, and in boyhood I thought they were terrible; but I have seen them when the black "vomito" raged in the tropics, and mothers and fathers fled away from their own children chil-dren and people fell in the streets; and those daughters daugh-ters of God picking up the deserted dead and dying. dy-ing. And I have felUtheir tender mercy myself; 'and when a man comes to me and says that a child or a dog had better bo taught by a politician who is rewarded by a place in a government Indian school than by a Sister of Charity, he wants to bring his fire escape with him. that's all. And it seems to me that any American, not to say any Catholic American, could not better employ part of his money than in aiding the support of the Indian schools conducted by these noble and unselfish un-selfish women, now frowned upon' and even actively active-ly antagonized by the partisan spirit of our politicians. poli-ticians. i- |
