The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-11-27
CIv1L1z1NG HA1R-CUTTING.

An order Tor general haircut ma
fallen upon the Mescalero tribe D
l Apache Indians in New Mexico. 1t ha
? acted on too, and every Indian on tn
reservation has been deprived of hi
hair. The order came from whit
man, and it has established this individ
uals record as having scalped more
Indians than any Indian ever scapet
: white men.
Lieut.. e. V. Stottler is the man who
has shorn the heads of the Mescalerc
Apaches He did it to civilize them
Before Lieut.. Stottler got hold of them
these particular savages were the most
lawless and depraved in the whole
country. In three years the Lieutenant
maintaining strictly one-man law,
has caused a startling metamorphosls
in the tribe, and to-day the Indians are
transformed from drunken, idle savages
into welldressed, sober, and industrious
builders of the commonwealth.
Stottler has great and cheerful
faith in the haircut as a civillzer.
There is natural impulse in the mod
ern mind, anyhow, to associate mascu-
line long hair with a primitive wildness.
Civilization makes man want to dress
well and take fastidious care of his per-
son. and leads him to a taste for a
well-trimmed head, as it does clean
shaven check. 1t is a matter of fashion
entirely else women also would dis
card their pretty tresses. The Lieu
tenant simply took snap Judgment ON
his Apache braves, with the delightful
conclusion that short haired men be-
came civilized, rather than that civil
lied men became short-haired. He or
dered a general barbering, and when 1t
came off a ton or so Of raven locks
off with IT
Many an owner of the locks was
.shorn while he wriggled on the ground
under as many of the Indian police as
could sit upon him-shorn as sheep are
shorn, struggling and gurgling the
whole while in futile protest. One dis
senting buck was chased all over the
Territory before he was finally caught,
thrown down. sat upon by the entire
posee and dehaired with a large, chop
pv nair of shears,
Lieut.. Stottler was given charge Of
these Indians in December 1894. Vari-
Que methods for keeping them in order
Idu DeSH lIleu Ill vain. IICy WNiC lhS
terrors of the neighborhood, and APP
parently incorrigible. They wouldn't
work, they wouldn't obey the law, they
wouldn't do anything that they thought
by any chance the Government would
like them to do. The one conscious
thing which they did do, and which,
above all, the Government wished
above ALL the government wished they
wouldn't do, was to drink copiously
and painstakingly of liquor specially
designed and brewed by themselves to
create the beastliest, vilest jag that ever
cheered an inebriated soul. The Lieu
tenant found the whole tribe drunk
when he arrived on the scene. He f1gur-
atively kicked some twenty or thirty Of
them sober and made policemen Of
them Then he told them to kick the
others into same novel condition.
They were living in tepees then, wear
ing blankets and subsisting on food sent
them by the Government. For years
the Government had been feeding them
and permitting them to lie around in
drunken ideness year in and year out. |
They stole for pastime and murdered
for pleasure Even among themselves
they sought recreation in fighting, and
a dozen brawls daily were INDUCED in
the way of regular exercise, in lieu Of |
plowing or saving wood.
The twenty bucks whom Lieut., Stot-
tier projected into sobriety with the
toe of his boot had been educated at the
expense of the Government, and were
presumed to know better than to run
about like mowglis of the jungle, with
out f1o q nd without chilli |
tv. He began on them, and soon had |
Them in American clothes thoroughly |
cleaned, barbered to finish and Install |
into regular duties. He jolted into |
their solid pates L straieht-fr1 m the. |
shoulder proposition that If they did |
not work they should II IT eat, When an |
Indian attempted to test the law by
laying off for day and waiting for
food to come to him., the food failed to
come The experimental got hungry !
and went to the food-and the way of |
his going lay through weary toll, made
doubly arduous as punishment for his
idleness.
Lieut.. Stottler determined at the out
set that the children Of the tribe should
go to school and be educated into men
and women with minds of their own
and with the right to choose their own
husbands and wives well developed in
their minds He caused the school at
Mescalero to be raised to plane Of
usefulness and filled it with the Indian
To-day these Indian young are
respectable citizens of the
educated and civilized, with
never a trace left of the shocking de-
pravity which the whole tribe was in
no later that 1894.
The haircut order was introduced
first with bride. Five dollars was
given to the brave who started the
shearing. He went home SHARED, and
his sduaw laughed at him. Mortified
bevond words, the brave stalked forth
In silent misery that yearned for COM
oany. He coaxed another to follow his
example. and the two coaxed two more.
Finally all the policemen were shingled
and uniformed. Then came the task of
UP the others. They were
'un down one by one, thrown to the
ground, and fleeced, their hair coming
)ff in notches and slashes as though it
we're cut with a scythe. To-day there
sn't longhaired Indian in the tribe,
lor is there an uncivillzed Indian.-The
san Francisco Examiner.