Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1857-02-18
An Indian Republic.


Dakota community, or rather, regular republic
in st. Paul Advertiser of the 18th inst. Iht
I Advertiser calls it the THE Hazlewood Repub
! lie."
Away up on the head waters OF Of the Min.
nesota. some forty miles above Fort Ridgely, in
corner of the misery strip of territory OF which
the usufruct was reserved to the Dakotas-all
that remains to them now of the magnificent
heritage to which they were born-~in the
wilderness-home of seyen thousand shiftless saw
ages. the very Hades of Indian barbarisln yet
din with ghostly songs and legend, the phos-
ophers of France apd the poets Of European re-
generation have been outstripped by the Dako-
ia hunter, and veritable republic organized,
representative, free, with written constitution
and a code of laws, has been established on the
banks of the Yellow Medicine.
A community of Dakota Indians, including
some %, families, renouncing the tribal system,
the habits, the supersttions and the costume
of their race, leaping at q single vault across
centuries of barbarisrn, have adopted at once,
by unanimous consent, the customs, the dress,
and at least the elementary ideas of civilized So
ciety
The traditional principle of the community of
property has been abandoned-the whole tribal
fabric dissolved and society reconstructed on
the basis of Justice to the individual, and its re-
lations adjusted on the principle of individual
responsibility. For this new order of things a
methodica organization has been effected, in
which all male adults are represented and in
which all directly participate. A President and
Secretary were regularly elected. A Constitu-
ton and Code of Bylaws were written, and
the rights of property recognized and deined.-
This is an abrupt transition, certainly, and pre-
sents the phenomena not ofgrowtll but of trars-
formation.
One finds the savage hunter of year since,
to-day dressed in the costume of the white man
the hair cut short and the paints and orna-
ments discarded-living in neat houses of the
simple but comfortable architecture usual in the
frontier settlements, with an inclosed field OF
four or five acres around him, titled with the
implements of modern husbandry. The Indian
woman is now released from the despotism of
tribal prescription is no longer beast of burden
but attends to the gentler duties of the house
hold while the husband accepts with pride the
toll his recent pride disdained
The interior of these little houses, usually,
built of logs reminds one of the simple and in
nocent cottage life of the exled Acadians. The
rude furniture fashioned by their uneducated
skill, is in everything an imitation of civliza-
ton The idea of comfort precedes the idea OF
elegance in the growth of mind, and ordinary
comforts are still novelties in Indian life, to
which the sentiment of property, itself novelty
gives a new charm. The rough bench or chair,
the bed or bunk curtained with lnuskets gauze,
the iron stove. the various utensils OF cookery,
the set of table ware upon a high, clean, shelf,
the lock and trunk, the suspended picture, the
well filed larder, and the cultivated gardens
outside inclosed with neat fences, all attest the
gradual development of the principle of acquisi
ton, and the renunciation of the lazy doctrines
of community. To one familiar with the bleak,
comfortless, entirely animal life and reckless i'm
providence of the Dakotas, this simple, domestic
picture, sketched on that harsh and desolate
background appeals with the force of dramatic
contrast-while it has for the student the inter-
est of d new phase of historical development of
which the condition are new, and the causes
not apparent
And what power wrought this radical revolu-
ton in the midst of the Dakotas? Was it the
spontaneous development of latent tendency
accelerated by the exigencies of the new mode
of life forced on them by the policy of the gov
ernment2 Was it the reflex influence of the
civilization which surrounds them9 Perhaps
these had the effect of suggestions or of argu-
ments But the Hazelwood Republic was the
fruit, in fact of long years of thankess toll and
of heroic self-sacrtce, the tardy result of the
despised labors of the Dakota Missionaries
Two excellent men, the Rev. DR.. Williamson,
and the Rev. S. R. Riggs, who have devoted
their lives to the evangelizaton of the Sioux,
find in this the first sheaf of the harvest which
| is springipg from their Joint labors.