The DeLamar nugget. [volume] (DeLamar, Idaho) 1891-1900, 1897-02-12
INDIANS HATE ENGLISH.
They Refuse to Speak 1t After
Leaving School.
The Rigid Rules Against the Use of Their
OTgongue Cause Them to De-
Ipise the White Mans
Language.

For years government instructors
among the Indians have been troubled
blythe fact that the red men, after learn
ing Hglish ut the schools as children,
invariably return to their own tongues
and seem positively to hate the white
mans language.
The superintendent of Indian schools,
Nv. n. Mailman, in a report just made to
the commissioner of Indian affairs, says
that the Indians were actually taught
to hate the English tongue, because of
the rigid rules against the use of any
Indian conversation by pupils. Until
lately the great majority of Indian
teachers have labored under the delu-
sion that they can hasten the acquisi-
ton of the English language on the part
of the pupils by compulsory measures,
visiting more or less severe penalties
upon the unfortunate children who were
caught in the use of the Indian speech.
The unreasonableness of such pro-
ceedings, which are always punished
with more or less serious failure, APP
pears when it is considered that ar
idiom that is forced upon a child by
means of penalties and other appeals
TO fear is necessarily hateful 10 him.
Then, in his own heart, he turns away
from it and uses it only under more o.
less pronounced protests. This be-
comes quite manifest as soon as the
children are removed from the restrain
of the school, when, for instance, thc
return to their parents for visit o
more or less permanently after gradua-
ton, and when, on meeting their
former teachers, they will either re-
fuse to speak English altogether or ar
aswer with shame-faced reluctance.
Prof. Mailman says: "rhere is no
doubt in my mind that the unreason
ableness of the offensive warfare mad"
in the Indian schools against Indian
vernacular is largely to blame for tn
apparent stubbornness with whic'
older Indians refuse TO learn Englis.
or to use the little knowledge thereof
which they may possess. If it is argued
that with liberty to use the Indian YER
nacular the Indian children viii ergag
IN conversation, possibly improper
which the teacher can neither under
stand nor control, the fault lies not
with the child's knowledge and use OF
his own idiom, but with the teachers
ignorance of the same, and the remedy
will be found not in the reprcssivf
measures, which must because of thei'
unre1Eonableness, fail of their purpose
but ~ the determined effort cn the
teachers part to acquire a knowledge
II the child's idiom.
"Probably the traditional hostile ut
titude of certain schools to the Indian
yernaculnr is responsible for the fact
that in n number of instances teacher
and other school employees continue a.
the same school, working with the sam
tribe of Indians, without acquiring an"
appreciable knowledge Of the languag
spoken at the homes Of their childre''
This ignorance frequently extends t.
the customs, habits of life, and the his
torical development of the tribe H.
question. They seem to treat the In
dams as outcasts. and the outcome OF
their work corresponds with this atti-
tude. "-Chicapo Tribune.