Golden Age, August 30, 1933

Download: PDF — Golden Age, August 30, 1933

c&e Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

uiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin

in this issue

THE SACROSANCT CLERGY OF CANADA

PICNICS AND POISONS

VIEWS OF THE NEWS

"A COLD-BLOODED ANALYSIS”

JEHOVAH THE LIFE-GIVER

<iiiiiliiiiiiiiiii:iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii;iiii!!iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin

every other WEDNESDAY

five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XIV-No. 364

August 30, 1933

CONTENTS

«• •.. . , ■ , , .. .(Dxd• •

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Terrible Wage Oppressions . . . 754

Only 12,540,000 Jobless Workeis . 755

Relief Arrangements in

Pennsylvania........755

Some of the Pittsburgh Indu 1 lies 755

Muscle Shoals for the People . . . 757

Planned Economy Too Difficult . .760

WUNDERLICHT CONSTRUCTION

Company.........767

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Housetop Views.......754

Education in the Depression . . . 756

Fate of Racketeer Witnesses . . . 756

Army and Navy Club Closes . . 757

Juvenile Crime in Liverpool . . . 757

MANUFACTURING AND MINING

Brazil, and Other Indiana Citie., . 754

Rushville Has a Surplus .... 756

The Solid Plastics......757

Electric Current Sold Last Year . 757 Current from Boulder Dam . . .758 Good-bye, Ingots and Blooms . . 758

Fortune from Sea Water .... 759 Los Angeles’ Water and Power . . 761

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

The Morgan Tax Evasions . . .752

Big Fellows Taking Over Oil Field; 756

Railroads Slipping Badly .... 756

Robot Flight from Los Angeles . .756

Three-Fourths of Bank Deposits

Released.........756

Where Chain Stores Are Strongest 756

National Debts and National Income 759

Elizabeth City’s Vanishing Millions 760

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Uncle Sam’s Swivel-Chair Army . 754

No Confidence in the Conference . 755

Pennsylvania State Legislature . 761

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

Ridding Australia of Cactus . . . 756

The Sangerhausen Black Rose . . 756

Development of Reward Wheat . . 758

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

High-Frequency Waves Destroy Bugs

Scientific Cat Naps in a Plane . .757

HOME AND HEALTH

Picnics and Poisons

Sun-Burning Is Not Sun-Bathing . 759

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

The Sacrosanct Clergy or- Canada 739

$600—Robbers—$600

Fish warden Gottlieb Esslinger . . 759

China Kept Within Her Income . 761

Somebody May Be Interested in This 762

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

No Hope Except in Jehovah King..........753

The Devil Looks After His ()>.a . 760

“A Cold-blooded Analysis" . . 762

Jehovah the Life-Giver . . . .763

Published every other Wednesday by GOLDEN AGE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. \., 1. S. A. Clayton J. Woodworth Piesident Nathan H. Knorr 1 ice President Robert S. Emery decretal y and Treasuier

FIVE CEMS a COPY $1 a year, United States ; ^>1.25 to Canada and all other countries. Notice io Subscribers remittances : For your own safety, remit by postal or express money older. When <oiii or iniiency is lost in the ordinaly mails, there is no redress. Remittances ir«,m countries other than those named below may be made to the Brooklyn office, but only by lmERNAiiuNAL postal money order.

BLtEiPT of a new or renewal subscription will he acknowled"* d only when requested. notice of expirvtion is sent with the journal one month beime .subscription expires. I’lease lenew promptly to avoid loss of copies.

change of address: Subscribers will please notify this othce of change of address at least two weeks in advance.

riBLisiiED also in Danish, Esperanto, Finnish, French German. Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Spanisii, Sac<1i<i.

Offices for Other Countries

Pi itish...............34 Craven Terrace, London. W. 2, Lmtlafid

Canadian............40 Irwin Avenue. Toronto 5» Oni.Tio, Canada

Austi (Italian ...... 7 Beresford Road. Strathfiold, N. S. W, Australia Xouth Afiican ............ Boston House, Cape Town, South Africa.

Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N. ¥., under the Act of March 3, K9.

The Golden Age

Volume XIV

Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, August 30, 1933

Number 364

The Sacrosanct Clergy of Canada By Axel Nielsen (Manitoba)

In Two Parts — Part 2

PELICAN NARROWS is about equally divided between two creeds, but the Catholics get at least 90 percent of the government rations. What little the Protestants get from “Father” Guilloux is always wrapped up in humiliation, taunting rebuke, or pleas to change their religion.

Some of the Indians do change in the end, although the matter of provisions is not always the deciding factor, for the Protestant Indians often envy their Catholic cousins, as the latter have a high priest in constant attendance. The Anglicans also bring pressure to bear upon the Indians where they happen to have the upper hand, for government graft and a physical hell are the common tool of both creeds in the North.

The Church Graft Structure

The Indian Department has built many boarding schools throughout the Canadian West and the Northwest. These schools have cost great sums, and were built for the ostensible purpose of educating the Indians. But when the schools were turned over to the churches, the Indian’s hope for an education was completely crushed. The churches fill these schools with self-appointed tools of ignorance and bigotry, at a profit to the church and in the interest of perpetuating creeds at government expense.

In the past the Indians were taught nothing but religion, while slight improvements have been noted lately, due to political unrest in a socially progressive West. But, on the whole, gross mismanagement continues unchallenged by a conscienceless government which is centered in the conservative and church-ridden East.

The Indian Department openly disregards the welfare of its charges, and political jobbery reaches its maximum stench in the Indian Department. The political support of churches is of far greater importance than the mere welfare of Indians, and thus the church graft structure is left undisturbed for the most part.

Chief Long Lance, a Cree Indian writer who received his education at Carlisle, was the only Canadian who ever brought Indian school conditions before the public. He had to be content with a much censored press report on the Indian church schools.

He stated that the school inspectors themselves were less to blame than the political heelers who got the Indian agency appointments, while the political government always turned a deaf ear to criticisms, pleadings and exposures. School inspectors were provincial civil servants, responsible to the provincial rather than dominion government. These inspectors often turned in scathing indictments, while their reports were acknowledged, filed away, and conveniently forgotten.

Various financial arrangements and accommodations are in force between the Indian department and church organizations. Subsidizing missionaries in various localities under the pretense of calling them school-teachers is one form, while Mr. Settee and his Montreal Lake school will serve as an example of this type of graft. Elsewhere, as, for instance, Pelican Narrows, Stanley, Red Earth, etc., missionaries or student divines were subsidized during the summer months under pretext of conducting schools.

“By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them”

In civilized communities it has been found necessary to train men and women specifically as school-teachers. Those who would teach the Indians should be qualified teachers in the first place, and should receive special training besides, for savages present problems peculiar to themselves, as a matter of course.

But instead of being qualified in any way as teachers, the missionaries and students selected by mission societies and endorsed by the Indian

Department are usually unfit, both by temperament and by training, to function as instructors of any sort. They are trained to mutter a church rigmarole, and explore a single verse in the Bible to tiresome depths, usually succeeding in befuddling their hearers and confusing themselves.

Their responsibility, such as it is, happens to be mission work rather than teaching, and their jobs depend on how acceptable they chance to be as missionaries. As teachers they can be, and always are, miserable failures, but it doesn’t matter so long as they keep up the missionary end of things, even if the Indian Department does foot the bill for a camouflage teacher.

In the case of boarding schools, incompetence is carried to even worse extremes. The government usually pays the church $150 annually for each Indian “student”, besides supplying and equipping buildings, and providing for many extras as well. The school year is ten months.

Some of the Indians stay over during holidays, especially if they are old enough to work, and a few are sent back to their villages for the summer months. In some schools the Indians are not permitted to leave until their sixteenth or eighteenth birthday, depending on the contract.

A Sinecure for Parasites

A hundred and fifty dollars each per year, besides many prerogatives that only a chartered accountant could unearth, so indirect are governments in this respect. The Indians do all the work, while “sisters” and “brothers” and “fathers”, etc., etc., etc., make their happy homes in the schools, which are resplendent with private quarters and fancy chapels, and these parasites lead the life of medieval lords, with plenty of native servants at either elbow.

The Indian children are kept in the schools until they are eighteen, as a rule, and the older “students” are worked shamefully hard, receive no pay except for a tobacco allowance for the boys, while I don't know just what the older girls get; maybe chewing gum. Snuff is the prime favorite with the boys, who chew and spit as they work. And the conscienceless church prelates collect $150 per annum for each of the hard-working older boarders, who really earn their board and much more besides.

To some people a hundred and fifty dollars may not seem like a large sum, but the Catholic church schools most certainly pay handsome dividends to the central organization, even though the schools do support large numbers of pious “sisters”, “brothers” and “fathers”, besides a “mother superior” or two.

But the Indian students rustle for their keep, as I have seen the boys fishing in the dead of winter, thirty miles or more from the school, week after week, when they were supposed to be receiving an education. The “sisters”, “brothers,” “fathers” and etceteras do the supervising. The Indians do the work. The Indians cut the wood and haul it, milk the cows and grow the vegetables, clear the land and stump it, plough it, plant it and harvest it.

A Death Grip on the Public Teat

The Catholic institutions do not pay wages to their “sisters”, “brothers,” “fathers” and “mothers”, and these individuals get their fun out of life as they know best, are well fed and clothed, with nothing to worry about, and plenty of servants to boss around. The Anglicans do pay wages, small as these wages are on the whole.

In Cranberry Portage, Manitoba, for instance, a munificent government allows a relief ration of $15 a month for a family of eleven. The same government pays the missions that much a month for a single Indian child, besides providing shelter, and the equipment which makes it possible for the child to earn his own keep!

The $15 a month in Cranberry covers whatever the family of eleven care to buy in the way of groceries, while fuel, light, housing and other incidentals are the concern of destitute persons, although the government gives clothing to the children in certain blue-printed cases.

In the light of comparison, the churches ought to be coining money, as the schools are almost always built just within the frontier, where fish and fuel, land and timber are handy, and the railroad is not too far away. Besides, prying eyes do not see too much in these isolated corners.

“Father” Guilloux, Breeder

When the Indians develop consumption, as they often do, the schools get rid of them in short order, sending them back north to spread the dread disease. A fourteen-year-old consumptive girl was sent back to Pelican Narrows. Her condition was such that the wonder was she lived, for the disease had affected her in the manner peculiar to certain stages of infection. That is, her physical actions were several moments behind her mental reactions. If her brain said, “Get out of the way!” she was a second or two late in getting going. If her brain said, “Stop!” she was a second or two behind again, bumping into people, or continuing in a way that often made her smile foolishly. Yet there is no telling how long an Indian will linger, for I have smiled as traveling doctors solemnly confided their findings to me, telling how this or that Indian had but thirty days to live, while some of these consumptives are still alive after seven years.

Other Indians were described as having one lung affected, and the doctor thought it would take a year or more to complete the fatal inroads of this terrible disease, and such Indians, in two specific cases, died within sixty days, although they showed few exterior symptoms of the disease.

Yet within three months of her arrival in Pelican Narrows, while yet under fifteen years of age, the priest, our friend “Father” Guilloux, married this “galloping” consumptive to an eighteen-year-old boy, against the wishes and the knowledge of the boy’s parents, who were away at the time.

Within a few months the girl was in a pregnant condition. I left Pelican Narrows about that time. I heard that she gave birth to a child and died, but do not know if the child lived.

The Art of the Spawner

Arthur Moran was discharged from the Cross Lake School with a tubercular gland at the approximate age of 16. After more than six years in the school, Arthur could not speak understandable English, and I had to beg him:

“Neehaathowan!” (“Speak Cree”)

His writing was even worse, although he could draw his own name and I got so I could decipher the Cross Lake brand of penmanship and construction.

Through the efforts of Mr. Jan and myself, Arthur Moran was sent to a Prince Albert hospital, where the tubercular glands were treated. Arthur was in the hospital about twelve months, and came back once more, although he was not cured. But in those twelve months of association with white people, in an English-speaking nonsectarian hospital, Arthur learned to speak and write fluently, with nothing but his own ambition to urge him on!

“Father” Guilloux hired Arthur Moran to take him north on a trip to South Reindeer Lake. The priest got the boy away from his relatives, and in a strange country, for the hoy had been absent so long that he knew no one in those parts. The priest set about finding Arthur a wife. He was going to mate the boy off as he would a canary. Arthur was girl shy, and came to me for advice. I told him there was only one thing to do.

“Then tell me,” pleaded the boy.

“Tell ‘Father’ Guilloux to go to h---,” I said.

“I will,” promised Arthur. So the priest was out of luck, for Arthur drew mental courage from my presence and continued advice. Then I went back to Pelican Narrows, expecting that Arthur and the priest would follow shortly.

Piling Burdens on Children

Instead of that, the priest went to Rabbit River. Here he found a fifteen-year-old girl whom Arthur had never seen nor heard of. Before Arthur Moran knew it he was a married man! The girl was Solomon Macauly’s daughter, and I doubt if she was fifteen, for I had seen her the summer before in short skirts, which is a pretty good indication of age in the north country and placed her under 14.

The marriage was an absurdity, and Arthur’s father and mother both cried, damned the priest, wouldn’t go to church for months, and wouldn’t receive the girl for two years, until the grandchildren began to arrive. Arthur Moran had the clothes on his back, but didn’t own his own dogs, a rifle, a trap or a canoe, nor was he trained to make a living in the North after spending six years in school cutting wood and grubbing gardens.

Girls under twenty-one drag four, five and six children about wherever they go, and young fathers have such broods to support before they are twenty-three, and never have a chance, with a growing family like that, to lay anything ahead with which to buy rifles and canoes. These are merely concrete examples of a general condition. What’s the use of Canadians’ pretending to be shocked over child marriages in India when the same thing is forced on Canadian Indians by so-called “white people”?

The Daughters of Magloire Benoni

Magloire Benoni was a Chippewaian who trapped around Swan River on Reindeer lake. He was a good trapper and excellent provider. I stayed in Swan River on my way to Hatchet Lake one winter, waiting for a blizzard to blow out. Magloire’s wife kept a tidy house. They had two daughters, about 11 and 13, and a small son besides.

Magloire was away, so I camped in his brother’s cabin, which was empty. The Indians are always suspicious about their womenfolk, and sometimes a trader must bear that in mind. But the Benoni woman sent her little girls over four times that day with a neatly covered silver tray which was loaded down with white bannock, cranberry sauce, boiled deer tongue, pounded deer meat with marrow fat dressing, delicious pemmican and properly steeped tea. The two little girls were clean, neatly dressed, well fed and healthy. They lived clean outdoor lives, had plenty to eat and warm clothing, and flourished on the happiness that kind parents bring to any child.

On the trail next day I met Magloire Benoni, who told me that he was sending his two daughters to the new Guy school in Sturgeon Landing. I showed the Indian where he was making the mistake of his life, telling him that he and his wife could take far better care of their children than would a mob of insolent church parasites. The girls could cook and sew, were learning the life that was meant for them, and had nothing to gain by going to school other than learning a great deal of church rigmarole, and a broken brand of English, of which they would be properly ashamed once they heard white people who could speak the language.

I also told Magloire about my own experiences with church institutions as a child, and convinced him that Indian children would be treated much worse. Magloire thanked me for having saved his children from a terrible fate.

Feverishly Clutching for Revenue

“Father” Egenolf, of Lac du Brochet, insisted that Magloire should send his two daughters to the school. Magloire was a councilor, and his example carried weight. The priest knew that unless he could persuade Magloire to send his own children, scarcely an Indian child would be sent out of Brochet, and the church would lose revenues thereby.

The priest never convinced Magloire himself, who was ashamed to look me up on his way to Sturgeon Landing with the children, but Eggie worked on the woman until she was convinced that sending the two girls to the school was the one and only wav to keep the whole family out of hell! ‘ ‘

Magloire’s example started the thing going, and the Brochet children brought thousands of dollars to the church, which must have its champagne, its gold, embroidered gowns and milliondollar palaces, no matter if poor people and ignorant persons are the grist which feeds the monstrous machine.

I made a trip to Sturgeon Landing the first part of December following the opening of Guy school. It was in 1927 or 1928. I took a box of candy along and visited the school by the back entrance. The children were playing outside and were poorly clad, wearing tennis shoes in winter, pea caps without fur bands, short cot-tonade jackets, and most of them had no mitts and wore summer-weight stockings. The mercury is sure to be below' zero almost any day in the winter, and often runs forty to fifty below7, even during November.

Children Fed from the Slop Cans

Workmen were finishing inside at the time. These men were paid by the day and provided with board. But the poor, ignorant Quebec “sisters” knew nothing about hygiene and less about modern cooking, while most of the workmen were western white men, and civilized. They objected to the food, and at last more than half of them went across the river to a boarding house where they paid for their board, although they got no rebate for the meals w7hich they refused to eat in the school. Cooking for the workmen was just another little incidental graft, but the men objected to the kind of cooking -which only a half-civilized Quebec peasant will concoct when faced with the task of cooking anything besides cabbages and peas.

These workmen told me that the leavings of those who did eat in the school, including the leavings of “mothers”, “sisters,” “fathers” and “brothers”, w7ere saved up in great galvanized slop cans. Then, every other day or so, these cans were put on the stove and -water was added to the slop.

Thus, meat scraps, potatoes and gravy7, fish, dessert, bread crusts and whatever happened to be left over by individual diners, or in the kettles, were all mixed together and thickened -with flour. The Indian children were then fed this poisonous swill, and even relished it.

Benoni’s Daughters Not Used to Slops

Nine Indian children died before the new year, and among them were Magloire Benoni’s two daughters. I think there were about sixty children that first winter, as the school was not completed, and the full quota could not be accommodated. Perhaps some of the children died of pneumonia or other complications caused by exposure, because they were improperly clad, but the greater number, if not all of them, died of stomach hemorrhages. The awful slops were no doubt the cause.

Magloire Benoni's two little girls were accustomed to good care, warm clothing and decent food, which was why they did not last long among ignorant, selfish, incompetent and cruel church parasites. Many of the other children had been poorly fed at home in some respects, but they certainly were not fed slops. What they got at home was primary foods, such as fish, meat, berries and bannock.

As for clothing, the Indian children were often in rags at home, but always warmly clad, for the women managed somehow to make something out of rabbit skins, moose hides, blankets, and even canvas from the summer before. Many of the children had rags sewn on them, and never took them off until they wore off, sleeping with what clothing they did have. But the children were warmly clad, no matter how poor their parents.

Most Despicable of Crimes

When one sets out to criticize a system, it is perhaps just as well to suggest an alternative. In the case of Indian schools, that is simple enough. The Indian Department is spending enormous sums of money, all of which not only is wasted, but does great harm. Subsidizing churches which make a profit out of the Indians at government expense, and at the expense of overworked children besides, is a crime of the most despicable sort; for children are helpless, and most Indians are children regardless of age.

The Indian Department should make itself responsible for the training of its charges. The Indian Department should leave religious fanaticism to the churches, and would be fully justified in prohibiting missionaries from setting their besodden feet on Indian territory.

The Indians want their missions, and some of them want their children in the church schools. They believe that the church is paying out good money in their behalf. In any event, the church alone “can keep them out of hell”. Their belief is negative, for the Indians do not understand heaven. As one old pagan put the case for organized religion among the Indians:

“If you join up they give you wings to flap around with, and a fiddle to scrape as well. If you don’t join up they set you on fire and take good care the fires don’t go out. And on top of that they laugh at my religion, which was good enough for my fathers, and protected my people until the white devils came along with their wings and fire pots.”

The Conscienceless Indian Department

The Indian Department, through political wirepullers, gave the Catholic church a select piece of land in every Indian reserve throughout the West, over the protests of pagan Indians and Protestant Indians as well. This was a political move to satisfy the Quebec Catholics. But the 1930 election chased the Liberals out of office, and the Indians were permitted to bring their case to court. The church lost, and was obliged to pay damages. Had the Liberals remained in power the case would never have reached the courts.

For half the present expenditure the Indian Department could establish a part-time day school throughout the North, and pay a good salary to a well-trained, intelligent instructor. The Indian children could stay in their homes like the civilized white children of today, and the Department could assist the parents with food and clothing. Such schools could not remain open the year round, because the Indians would be away six months in the year making a living with traps and snares.

Vocational training, hygiene and other subjects would thus replace the insidious church rigmarole, the superstition of a fiery hell, the back-breaking work of gleaning dividends for the church, and many of the present-day abuses. One good instructor holding school sessions five months in the year will accomplish infinitely more than a mob of “mothers”, “sisters,” “fathers,” “brothers,” “deacons,” “Reverends,” matrons, spinsters and choir girls.

The younger generation should be taught fur propagation and other Northern pursuits. It is plainly ridiculous that men should chase over a hundred miles of country for the elusive fox, mink, beaver or rat, when he could raise the furbearing animals in a very small space with much less effort and better results.

But the Indian Department of Canada is the embodiment of criminal neglect, conscienceless exploitation, and studied incompetence.

The Sturgeon Landing school is no worse than any of the others, and better than most. A seventy-year-old deaf (and most assuredly dumb) antique medico was sent up from The Pas to whitewash the clergy. This old fossil reported that the nine children died of new plaster. He didn’t specify whether the children ate the plaster, but the plaster was to blame in any event. But the menu was changed from slops to fish, as dead children pay no dividends. There was an improvement in clothing issued as well, so the martyred children accomplished something for those who followed. It was ever thus.

Avoidance Is Sometimes Kindness

I made the usual trip to Brochet for Easter. Magloire Benoni wanted to see me, but I avoided him with studied deliberation, and had Indians watching for me. Magloire was crazy with grief, and hadn’t set a trap or done a thing since he heard that his children were dead. Getting my story would only add fuel to the flames, and would end up in an insane demonstration of great violence. Even if I were to keep quiet, and pretend that I knew nothing whatever about the matter, I knew that the very sight of me would recall my warning advice given the winter before.

I never avoided a man so much in all my life, and even went to the extreme of waiting outside in the bush while Indians persuaded Magloire that I was nowhere around. I had a positive premonition that something would click in the Indian father’s brain if he ever caught sight of me. Just one look, and he would go back with a definite plan of action: burn the church, shoot the priest, or do something like that; or even kill his heartbroken and bedridden wife for having given him no peace until he had consented to place the children in school.

For that matter, “Father” Egenolf himself appeared heartbroken over the death of Mag-loire’s two children, and made a trip to Sturgeon Landing, where, I understand, he told the responsible persons plenty. But a priest is a priest first, and a human creature afterwards if such a thing is possible.

“Father” Egenolf was a German, a bit of a tyrant, erratic, and kind-hearted whenever he found it possible to shake church fanaticism for the moment. Most of the Catholic church parasites among the Indians were German, Belgian or French. In other words, the Indian Department put foreigners in charge of native Canadians.

Perfect System of Mental Cruelty

The Indian children begin their schooling a self-reliant, independent and even willful lot. They go back broken, self-conscious and browbeaten. The Catholic priests treat their young Indian charges with open contempt.

They make the Indians feel the racial differences to begin with, but go much further than that. The priests elevate themselves to arrogant heights and assume the attitude of a perfect snob who is forced to pick up his skirts as he moves through a pack of mangy dogs.

Many of the Indians are thick-skinned and get through school without hating themselves, assuming a grinning attitude of self-abasement for the sake of such favors as 'freedom from a fiery hell’. But many of the Indians are embittered with the cruel treatment they receive, and all of them become slaves, willingly or otherwise, for the Catholic priests have learned how to mold young minds to their vicious liking.

The Catholic priests resort less to physical punishment than most people would believe, for their system of mental cruelty, superstitious frightfulness and downright deviltry suits the Indian temperament and does not leave physical marks. This system has been perfected from the Dark Ages down to the present time, and the tutored fears of these helpless children simplify discipline to a marvelous degree. One bark from the priest, and the rabbits run.

The Catholic church in Canada, among certain foreign elements and rural Quebec, resembles Mexico and Spain of two decades ago. But among the helpless Indians, with the aid of Government subsidies, the reign of terror has reached its zenith.

Taxpayers Dreadfully Wronged

The Indian Department will always admit that Catholic Institutions give them less trouble than similar Protestant schools among the Indians. Certainly, and if someone would kill the Indians off and be done with it, then the Indian Department would have even fewer responsibilities.

The Anglicans teach hell-fire and brimstone to the Indians, of course, but have not as yet developed a perfect system or method. The Anglican hell is quite hot, but less convincing. The chief trouble with Anglican schools is that of incompetence, and discipline is therefore sadly remiss.

The Indians do not fear the reverends and matrons and spinsters and choir girls who do the supervising in Protestant schools, nor do they love them, for that matter. Physical punishment is much oi'tener the rule in Protestant schools, and reflects the insufficiency of those in charge.

After watching the picked weaklings and incompetents of our own white race, the graduates of Protestant Indian church schools often go home with the idea that white people are a contemptible lot. But the white people must be tolerated, for they issue the government rations, write tickets on heaven, and underwrite exemptions from hell.

The Indians all believe that the church is paying the bill for their schools, and the Indians therefore wrongly place this item on the credit side of church accounts. This belief is one of many deliberate lies.

“Investigating” the Church Schools

It was never the purpose of Catholic authorities to teach the Indians anything but the rigmarole of creed in their own language. The church succeeded admirably in keeping the Indians from learning anything about the outside world until about three years ago, when I sent a report to Ottawa, where it received but slight attention. Still, the Saskatchewan government was also supplied with a copy of my charges, and a few changes were made which might or might not have been the result of my complaint. My charges were leveled against the Indian Department and the Catholic church jointly, with the Anglicans coming in for criticism of a slightly different sort.

An employee of the Indian Department, and one of the very employees directly responsible for the vicious state of affairs, was sent around to investigate my charges. Copies of these charges were forwarded to all the clergymen in the district, months before the “investigation’’ was made.

Trading company head offices were also notified, for the word went around that traders would find it advisable to keep strictly out of the controversy. The natural result was a predetermined whitewash, as nothing else could be expected when a Department “investigates’’ itself without the help of complainants.

I was never interviewed, although I was available, and the “investigator” passed through Cranberry Portage. I didn’t know it at the time, but he knew where I was to be found. I do not know at first hand just how the “investigation” was conducted, but can at least repeat what the Indians and white men told me about it later. I have seen enough crimes committed against the Indians without borrowing accounts from others, but in this case I was in a position to verify reports personally.

In the first place, my charges were deliberately garbled through the interpreter, as I kept copies of my report, and interviewed the Indians as they came to Cranberry Portage afterward. For instance, one of my charges was that an old Indian, Angus Mirasty, was refused sick rations when he was most certainly entitled to same without question, while another Mirasty, a young man who had a credit balance of more than a hundred dollars on our books at the time, received sick rations for an ailing child, just because he had that credit balance, and donated rather freely to the church. In this case, my charge was deliberately reversed, and the old Indian indignantly denied the charge as it was interpreted.

Celibates Reflect Their Nasty Minds

Another of my charges referred to the manner in which priests interfered with the family life of the Indians, such as arbitrarily ordering women to travel in pairs, to remain inside after dark, and like medieval prescriptions of an unnecessary and absurd description, considering the Indian temperament.

White men send their wives with the Indians, by dog train or by canoe, unaccompanied, and unafraid of irregularities or atrocities, although often such trips require days and weeks, with camps in the open, or at best under a tent. The priests merely reflected their own nasty minds.

The priests forbade Indian women to enter a trader’s house to do the wash, or scrub the floors, unless properly guarded by another woman and a child besides, while some traders were not to be trusted at all, and such traders would have to get Protestant women to do their work, or do it themselves.

I took that sort of rot as a personal insult, even though I considered the manner of men who promulgated such childish nonsense. I made it my business to refuse work to any woman who would not defy the priest, and do her work without a police guard. I fired the first woman who told me what a martyr she was making of herself, and the priest at last got tired of demanding a police force when the women did scrubbing for me unaccompanied.

Ruffling the Skirt Department

There is a humorous side to everything, and I got quite a kick out of ruffling the clergy. I bribed a woman to shorten her skirts until they reached the obscene height of her ankles. “Father” Guilloux denounced this woman publicly in church, but the habit spread, until all the younger women took to wearing their skirts ankle length, instead of dragging them in the dirt. I sold a few less yards of print, but otherwise got cpiite a kick out of the reformations.

Bobbing hair was particularly taboo. I left Pelican Narrows before I had time to break down this and similar taboos. We got in a supply of V-neck blouses, but got them back from the Indian because the priest would not stand for them. But in this case there was a commercial incentive, and the priest eventually capitulated.

The Beskirted Order of Ananias

After the “investigation” I saw friends, and these told me that they got so sick of listening to the abuse heaped upon me by the clergymen throughout the North, and in particular by the ‘Investigating Committee of One’ from the Indian Department, that they defended me openly, although it was their place to keep quiet for their own good.

One of these friends asked the “investigator” to keep quiet if he could do nothing but criticize me for telling the evident truth, as this friend had known me, and been in the country, long enough to know the truth. Another friend suggested that I be permitted to confront my accusers, and offered to bet that I would prove the truth of every statement made by myself, and prove the statements of priests and others to be deliberate falsehoods.

Priests are natural liars. They do it for the church, of course, until at length they get into the habit of lying unnecessarily. The white people up north, as apart from the priests, used to visit the padres who would tell each visitor wonderful gossip about his neighbor. Then we would throw a party and compare notes, while the priests furnished all the laughs. Often we started rumors ourselves for the sake of getting them back with all the fancy absurdities such as only a bushed priest can think up.

Converts Rotten with Venereal Disease

During the 1929 Saskatchewan election church graft was made an issue, while certain exposures helped to elect a Conservative government. Separate schools in which French was the predominant language, against the laws of the province, and similar abuses in force in some French Canadian settlements, for the sake of votes, were given a public airing, while the Anderson forces were pledged to clean house on these issues.

Quebec French-language newspapers and periodicals ran a long-distance barrage of embittered editorials and abusive cartoons, until it almost seemed likely that Quebec would send an army into Saskatchewan territory!

At He a la Crosse, three hundred miles north of Big River, the nearest railroad point, the situation was particularly bad. That section of the country was completely overrun with priests, missions, schools, and the like. Besides, there was a French element among the Indians, which made it easier for the French-speaking Canadian and Belgian priests to gain complete control.

Hardly an Indian or a breed could be found that wasn’t rotten with venereal disease, while darkest ignorance was the eternal burden of these backward, church-ridden peoples. “Fathers” Egenolf, Guilloux, Desmereaux and others in the Pelican Narrows district were plaster saints compared with the He a la Crosse monsters.

Another Source of Graft

The Government was at last forced to send a doctor up to He a la Crosse, where a hospital was erected; and, of course, this hospital came under the control of church prelates, as it afforded another source of graft.

Just how far the provincial government went in rectifying He a la Crosse conditions, I do not know, but Premier Anderson’s government did insist upon employing a first certificate schoolteacher in each of the Indian boarding schools.

Such schools are the responsibility of the Indian Department, but the provinces share certain responsibilities in the matter of education and inspection, if and when a provincial government can be found that will implement such responsibilities for the protection of the Indians within its borders.

Catholic authorities, in particular, are greatly perturbed over this changed state of affairs, and will certainly take the stump against the Anderson regime during the next election. In Pelican Narrows we had sworn affidavits at one time attesting to the statements made by a certain priest that half-breeds and Indians who had a vote would be excommunicated if they did not vote the church ticket.

Children Taught Nothing in Eight Years

The Indian children in Guy school, Sturgeon Landing, are actually learning to read and write English; thanks to a licensed teacher. Hitherto the church parasites had maintained that Indians were naturally dumb, and their children could not absorb an education, except the complicated church and choir rigmarole of every “holy” day in the calendar, and the much more complicated syllabic script, the Cree alphabet with which church propaganda is written.

Clergymen are proven liars, and the Indian children have proved them liars again, for the first certificate school-teacher in Guy school has done more in one year than Cross Lake school in Manitoba did up to the time it was burned to the ground.

Indians used to come back from Cross Lake school, after an attendance of six to eight years duration, and nobody could understand their peculiar brand of disconnected bastard English. It was the sort of jargon which ignorant nuns of French rural Quebec origin might speak, if they happened to be bright enough to get even that far.

As for reading and writing, the Cross Lake “students” knew syllabic script forward and back, but few of them could stumble through the first reader, or write a readable letter. There were a few exceptions, where certain ones were determined to learn, and stayed around Cross Lake oi- The Pas for a year or so after they were discharged, mingling with white people and English-speaking breeds.

A few of the returned “students” picked up some English from traders and the like, while many of them forgot the atrocious jargon and reverted to bush language, ashamed of the incorrect and ridiculous version of Cross Lake cross-breeds in vocabularies and hieroglyphics.

Clergy Ruin Everything Not Fool-Proof

The Anglican schools were somewhat better in regard to teaching the English language at least; for the Anglican missionaries, matrons, choir girls and spinsters did speak the English language, and seldom went to the trouble of learning Cree.

As for the school-teachers employed in the Anglican missions, these individuals could never be classed as teachers in any sense of the word, and were usually spinsters and choir girls with religious inclinations, but entirely without the necessary training, temperament or talent.

The missionaries and “reverends” in charge were even worse than the “teachers” and matrons under them; for clergymen do not display the practical general knowledge so essential to ninning institutions of any sort. The impractical clergymen ruined anything breakable, such as lighting and pumping plants, heating systems, and the like; for they seldom possessed executive ability, and therefore fell short of hiring men who knew their business.

“Rev.” Hives, of Lac la Rouge, who was in charge of the school some years ago, did pretty good work as a school superintendent so far as the system permitted. He worked with what material there was to be had, and made the best of it. Curiously enough, I have heard him constantly criticized because it was thought he might have been more zealous as a minister. I never knew it to fail: when someone within the church organizations develops a little horse sense everybody knifes him in the back.

But the Anglicans are not guilty of a deliberately planned system of mental cruelty such as the Catholic hierarchy has perfected. The Anglicans betray a natural race prejudice, an attitude which sometimes becomes extravagant, particularly in the case of Englishmen who can be very aloof and snobbish in their relations with natives in any land.

But such an attitude never approaches the pernicious practices of Catholic priests, who cause the Indian children to cringe, to feel their status keenly, to fear the power of priests, to beg small mercies sneeringly granted, and to grovel in the “omnipotent presence” of all the prelates, small fry and swordfish, dolphins and sharks, or whatever one might wish to call the various church parasites.

Indians Resent Cruel Treatment

Cross Lake school, in Manitoba, was burned to the ground four years ago with the loss of nine lives. No public investigations were instituted, although the police tracked down a former inmate and brought him to trial on a charge of arson, two years after the alleged crime was committed. The young Indian was convicted, and will spend the rest of his years in the penitentiary.

Indians who knew’ the young man as a school boy tell me that he was of an independent sort, and was cruelly punished again and again. The youth had been an unwilling prisoner in the school, and, like many others, tried again and again to run away from the terrible place. The priests, then as now’, turned the mounties loose on the poor kids, and back went the hopeful runaways to prison. Perhaps the young man is guilty, although I doubt it. That nine Indians should perish for the sake of obliterating an infamous institution is regrettable, but, at least, the wretched thing was obliterated.

La Plonge Indian school, in the He a la Crosse district, was burned to the ground three years ago, and twenty-nine children were burned to death, together with a nun. No investigations were held, and the “martyred-’ nun was loudly applauded for her devotion. ‘She had died while attempting to save her young charges,’ said the frenzied pro-Catholic accounts. She was an inspiration to good Catholics who read about it, and young girls with hearts broken by imagined first love were urged to imitate the devotion of this departed nun and take up the veil in her stead! Then there were the twenty-nine helpless Indian children. But w’hat’s an Indian, more or less, or a dozen or two, for that matter?

About three months ago another Indian church school was burned to the ground for the second time. Then, two weeks ago the Machay school, near The Pas, Manitoba, burned to the ground, also, with “Rev.” Fraser in charge. But— hush! The sacrosanct clergy were in charge of all these institutions, and nothing must be said or done about it.

Arson, Carelessness, or Both?

Twenty-nine Indian children charred in a heap at La Plonge. I'gly stories about that fire circulate among the Indians whose children came out alive. They tell of a fanatical nun who bolted the door and prayed to “Mother Mary” for “deliverance”. And the children were “delivered”. Delivered from the cruel church institution; delivered from the wretched poverty which deliberately fostered ignorance breeds; delivered from the fear of an eternal fiery hell!

But a few months previous to the La Plonge fire nine children were burned to death in the Cross Lake school. Children facing the fiery demons in grim reality. Children that aw’oke from their dreams of hell to find flames enveloping them! Children who had lived hand in hand with Nature and loved her, walked with her and talked to her. Children whose minds were prostituted with the conscienceless lies of church prelates, who told of a “God-’ that would fry little children over an open fire in all eternity unless they obeyed the priests to the letter.

Were the buildings fireproof? Were those in charge capable of taking ordinary precautions against fire? Were they equal to the trust reposed in them by sleeping children? Were reasonable efforts made to save defenseless inmates? or did the padres and the rest of their human paraphernalia run for their lives? Surely the loss of life, particularly in public institutions, called for a thorough investigation. But not in Canada. Not where the sacrosanct clergy are concerned. And there were the nine lives in Sturgeon Landing too, a death toll which w’as the product of ignorance and greed.

Indians Beginning to Awaken

Another church graft chapter is being written today. The Pelican Narrows Indians, and others in the district, have begun to wake up. I can accept a measure of responsibility for the small beginning. It is becoming more and more difficult for the padres to get “students”, for the murmur of overworked children against the fetters of open contempt is drifting through the country.

And so, in order to fill up the institutions and pay the maximum dividend thereby, the children of white men, provided such children have a portion of Indian blood in their veins, are now7 being taken into the Indian church schools, while the padres collect from an asinine Indian Department.

To be sure, legislation means nothing in Canada. An “Order in Council-’ decrees that black is white, annuls the written statute, and writes temporary statutes. Orders in council are passed by the “Cabinet in Council”, and are legislative enactments which defeat the wishes of Parliament in the most deliberate manner.

Parliament upholds this travesty on its rights, because in Canada the defeat of an order in council, when referred to Parliament for sanction, would lose members of Parliament their jobs and precipitate another election.

That orders in council are subject to sanction by Parliament is a meaningless pretense. No doubt a covering order supports the Indian Department and the church, and such an order arbitrarily permits white to be called black.

But it must be a bitter disappointment to “Bishop” Charlebois (we call him “Charlie Boy”) when he thinks about those first certificate school-teachers in Saskatchewan, for these teachers must produce results or surrender their certificates. The Indians are actually learning to read and write at an early age. They will be reading newspapers and magazines, and— horrors! what if they should read Judge Rutherford ?

Northern Missions Once Profit-bearing

There was a time when northern missions paid for themselves, even without government graft. But those days are over; for the Indians have become impoverished with disease, scarcity of fur, and a changed living condition. There was the time when Indians moved from place to place and allowed first one section and then the other to recuperate, piece by bit, and thus the country was not killed out.

Now the Indians cluster around their churches, and refuse to budge when the country is trapped out, fished out, and shot out, while the white trappers go farther afield, away from the churches, and trap out the sections which once nourished the Indians, and might have fed the church territory with its overflow.

It must never be forgotten, when dealing with the Indian question, that traders believe in the missions for selfish reasons. The Indians stay put where the church rears a spire “heavenward”, and thus the traders can estimate their business accordingly, and need not fear the loss of buildings caused by nomad Indians’ moving out of the country.

Estimating merchandise requirements in the North is no easy task at any time; for a whole years’ requirements are ordered at one time, and if the trader orders too much he is saddled with idle capital, while if he orders too little it sometimes takes months before the shortage can be replaced. The church is a stabilizing influence ; for the worshipers are the trader’s customers.

“God Save le Pope”

The padre in charge of Guy school in Sturgeon Landing is Napoleon Dorion. And he is a little corporal, all right. A party of Saskatchewan officials landed in Sturgeon Landing by ’plane, while the nuns lined up the Indian children and ordered them to sing “God Save le Pope!”

“God Save the King” is Canada’s colonial anthem, and the music, besides a parody on the British declaration of patriotism, was stolen in honor of the pope. The ignorant nuns did not realize that it might be considered bad taste to belittle King George in the presence of politicians, or perhaps they wanted to annoy the Saskatchewan officials. The first certificate school-teacher arrived shortly thereafter, and the “le pope” incident might have furnished the deciding impetus to a very necessary reform.

In Pukkatawagan is “Father” Desmereaux, who gleefully advertises the fact that no Indian girl over fifteen stays single over the week-end, unless she happens to be attending school. It wouldn’t do to marry off a paying boarder just yet. He also counts the increase by these child marriages, as a farmer counts his pigs. This “Father” Desmereaux is another teapot despot, ruling out dances, ankle-length skirts and bobbed hair, besides interfering with family life generally.

Open, Deliberate Robbery of Indians

During the mining boom of a few years ago, traveling engineers had to see “Father” Desmereaux about Indian finds. Options were drawn up, not with the Indians, nor with the Indians named as the beneficiaries, but with some Catholic institution receiving the benefit. The Indians were to get their reward in heaven by special proclamation, and the Indian donor would be honored in heaven according to the financial success of the mine discovered.

The church thus found itself in possession of mining claims, even though the mining ventures did not all pan out a profit, as certain fees had to be paid whether the property produced or not. “Bishop” Charlie Boy received a special dispensation from a willing government which exempted his church from financial burdens in connection with the stolen mining ventures.

The prospectors found this out and demanded similar treatment. That’s the trouble with the West. Not everybody is Catholic or Anglican, as in Quebec, and the vigorous complaint of “unholy” prospectors fixed Charlie Boy, who had to pay up or shut up in the end.

“Father” Guilloux, of Pelican Narrows, also had his hand, both hands, outstretched for the fruits of Indian prospecting. But he stretched and pleaded in vain, for the Indians had myself and one or two others to reason with them. Make an Indian seem foolish in his own eyes and he forgets hell long enough to use his head.

Conspiracies to Keep Masses in Chains

When the province of Alberta tried to get her natural resources, six years ago, the Liberal government attached a rider to the bill which provided for separate church schools, to be maintained by the provincial government. The Alberta legislature indignantly turned down the measure, and the transfer was thereby delayed two years.

Church grafts are many, even outside the Indian country, and even more horrible. The Catholics get most of their graft from the Liberal party, while the Conservatives hand out favors to the Anglicans, although both Big Business parties grant special favors to church organizations in general, as part of a conspiracy to keep the masses in chains.

Canada’s prisons are cluttered with well-paid padres and chaplains, while prisoners are forced to attend these hypocritical conclaves or be severely punished.

At Headingly jail, in Manitoba, for instance, three men were found in the black hole, an incident which a newspaper man uncovered. If the press would print more facts about the guilty acts of criminal officials and sacrosanct individuals the press could be of service to the public, instead of riding the public down with propaganda and piffle, the latter being all about the indiscretions of press-agented movie morons and other rot. One of the prisoners found in the black hole was there because he refused to attend a hypocritical church service.

Paganism Masquerading as Christianity

The evil fruits of mission domination are the destruction and degradation of a once proud race. The pagan rites of the Indians were taken away from them, as part of a “civilizing” process. A mounty went to Lac du Brochet on an inspection trip, and chanced to see “Bishop” Charlie Boy arrive in the Indian village. Canopies and carpets awaited the bishop. Indians kneeled and bowed their heads! A marching procession kissed the bishop’s ring. Children and women cringed! Once independent Indian bucks bowed, dropped to their knees, hung their’ heads, and acted as though they missed a tail to stick between their legs.

The mounty spoke out, loud enough for the cunning bishop, the fussy padres, and others to hear:

“I have orders to discourage paganism whenever I come across it. This is paganism as I have never hoped to see it.”

Several New York sportsmen happened to be traveling through the country, and one of these was a devout Catholic. He told me:

“I can never look a priest in the face again.”

The mounty returned to headquarters, and his chevrons were taken from him without any preliminaries whatever. “Bishop” Charlie Boy saw to that.

The pagan rites of Indians looked foolish to white people, but many of these childish manifestations had a wise meaning. Sanitation was provided for, and made interesting with ceremony. Morals were strictly provided for, and the ceremony was interesting to some, and painful to others. Health was also provided for by rites, as were hygiene and family relations. Much of the pagan creed was cruel, but most of it was necessary to the health and morals of the Indians.

Old Paganism Better than the New

Paganism was suppressed by the police and by the missionaries. Instead of paganism, the fear of hell and the forgiveness of sin under certain guaranties were supplied the Indians. The pagan steam bath was declared obscene, but modern plumbing fixtures are not available in the North, especially among the Indians, and thus the natives never bathe, or take their rubdowns as in heathen days.

Excesses were punished in the old days, and young people were warned and trained by the help of a pagan ceremony. Excesses today are allowed unchecked, for there is always the confession box, and the white men usually set the pace.

Consider an Indian, married, the fathei1 of children, and living on the outskirts of The Pas or any other frontier white man’s town. His woman makes the acquaintance of white men, and the husband discovers her indiscretions. He therefore whips her.

Most people consider wife-beating a heinous crime. Perhaps it is, but a savage race cannot be elevated overnight. Besides, there are no divorces among Indians. At any rate, an Indian woman will listen to a stern husband only when she knows that the command carries the warning of chastisement. They are still savages, these Indians.

The whipping has the desired effect, and the woman shuns her white friends, until the latter discover the reason. Then the white men tell the woman that it is unlawful for a man to beat his wife, and promise to have the law’ on the husband and father if he attempts to beat her again.

Where the Police Come In

Thus reassured, the Indian woman continues her indiscretions, and receives presents of money, goods and wine. Again the Indian husband and father beats his wife, and some days later is surprised to have a mounty haul him into court. The judge will usually not sentence the Indian for first offense. The Indian does not understand this interference with his family life, but does know that his own self-respect and the safety and integrity of his family depend on keeping his woman straight. So he beats her again, and this time he goes to jail.

After six months of confinement the Indian has had plenty of time to consider matters, and usually gives up trying to fathom the vagaries of justice. The white man’s law forbids wifebeatings. Very well, the Indian does not want another trip to jail, and will therefore stop beating his wife, and another milestone has been reached. The Indian has become “civilized”.

Home once more, the Indian finds that his woman has made progress among her white friends, and she shows him the fruits of her new trade. It takes time for him to get used to things, but liquor helps him to forget his troubles. His wife becomes a prostitute in his own house. The children grow up in such an atmosphere, and the woman, being ignorant, keeps on bearing children, quite often sired by white men, rather than by her husband.

And So, Civilization at Last

No Indian woman lasts long as a prostitute. They age quickly, and do not look after themselves. Finally, the Indian couple, and even their children as they grow older, become infected with venereal diseases. Sometimes they are discovered and hauled into a hospital. More often they spread disease far and wide. But they are ■'civilized'’, because they go to church, and have learned that wife-beating is not civilized.

Of course, there are many laws on the statute books which are meant to protect the Indians. It is illegal to give intoxicating liquors to an Indian. There are even local regulations forbidding Indians off the reservation after dark, or prohibiting white men from trespassing on the reservations after dark. But a good many Indians do not live on reservations, and the rules and regulations cannot be enforced in any event.

…