East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1904-10-18
WHITE MAN s SIN
WRONGS INDIAN
WHISKY PEDDLING AN
UNMITGATED CURSE.
Charles NJ. Robinson Bitterly Con-
demns Practice of Selling Whisky
TO Indians-Says More Hell In One
Small Spot I'm Pendleton Than Any
where Else on Earth-Enougl
Work Here to Keep Reformers EN-.
ployed for Years to Come.

Speaking of the increased sale of
liquor to Indians in this city, Charles
NJ. Robinson. chief clerk at the Uma-
tilla agency, in writing to Rev. C. f.
Battalle of this city, says:
"Of one thing am sure: There is a
great work for a willing reformers in
Pendleton. Our Indians become
maudlin drunk there. Some of the
saloons have tables in the rear, and
a button-and-bell arrangement for
calling out an inhabitant of the saloon
who will furnish anything drinkable
they may call for, for the price. And
yet, it is felony to sell Indians in
toxicating liquor!
Il do not know of an area of
ground of equal dimensions in the
world that embodies more hell, q do
not speak irreverently) than the block
north of Webb street and east of Main
in Pendleton, including the closed al
ley, If testimony is to be believed. One
missionary could devote his whole
his days and his nights, his working
season and his vacations--for years to
come, in that section.
II you will station yourself at the
corner where the city pound is Iocat-
ed, some bright Saturday, you may
likely see dozens of Indians passing in
and out of the demi-monde quarter,
| They are going in for whisky, alcohol,
beer and worse pollutions. These
dark-skinned people never knew such
sins until the white men came among
| them. Now, alas! they know 1t all
too well, Whisky and scrofula, with
other more dread diseases, are deci-
mating the race.
Drunk to blindness the bleary
eye notes not the approaching train,
nor do the dulled ears catch its sound,
till Grassland eternity has claimed
its own. Or the unsteady foot totters
upon the brink and the mill race
swallows another victim; or the thick
tongue lisps out the hasty insult. the
pistol flashes, and another unpre-
pared soul is launched upon the bill
lows OF the great Deyonu'
Seventeen such deaths since | have
been here-only a few years! 1t is
terrible. The white man sometimes
acquires an appetite for whisky-with
the Indian 1t is no appetite-it is a
passion. Every preacher, minister OF
priest in Pendleton owes it as a duty
to himself to his deeply offending
a l.. 90,
fight this curse to the Indians.
81 am today sending a case to your
district attorney for his action, where
in a man who came by the agency on
business few days ago, went on into
Pendleton and obtained whisky, al
though 1t is a penitentiary crime to
give or sell it to him, and become Sc
drunk that he sold his brothers. horse
for third of its value so he could
buy more whisky.
'T am willing to aid the owner oi
recover the horse, but only on condi-
tion that the one who sold 1t shall be
punished. These terms will be com
; piled with. and that means only an
other penitentiary victim. Hundreds
of such cases have come before me.
"Peo was one of the brightest In
dian chiefs, a consummate orator, g
skilled diplomat, leader among the
redmen of the Northwest; one day h,
got enough to reach the top, and nov
he is physical and mental wreck
will probably end his days in an asy.
lum-all due. as the physicians o
your own town pronounced, to alco
holism."
CHARLES NJ. ROBINSON.
Clerk Umatilla Agency.