The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1911-05-13
THE INDIANS OF
LEAD DIOCESE
BISHOP BUSCH WRITES OF THE
CONDITIONS AND NEEDS OF
HIS INDIAN MISSIONS.

/ HIS INDIAN MISSIONS.
! In the course of an article on the
cese' in the current number of the
Extension Magazine, Bishop Busch
writes as follows of the conditions and
needs of the Indian Missions in the
territory under his jurisdictions:
| When his Eminence, Cardinal Van
nutelli, visited the city of St. Paul
| last September, among other tokens of
esteem, an assembly of between fif-
teen and eighteen thousand citizens
greeted him in the local auditorium.
1t was my privilege to be one of that
vast cOncourse and at the same time
to see before me number about
equal to the Catholic population of
the Diocese of Lead There, under one
roof, were gathered together as many
as here are scattered over forty-two
thousand square miles of territory.
There was hardly standing room; here,
! if equally distributed, you would find
one Catholic after searching every two
and half square miles. There each
was surrounded by call that exalts and
embellishes civilized life; here all
more or less suffer the privations of
the frontier. There were the elite of
religion and culture; here nearly half
the Catholic population are aboriginal
savages, with but the rudiments OF
learning and religion.
In these antitheses the chief features
of the diocese of Lead are described.
The five local Indian reservations
count population of fifteen thousand
natives, either full or mixed bloods.
The former are numerically on the
decline, while the latter are growing
more numerous Half of this number
are at least baptized Catholics The
Episcopal and Congregational Churches
have for years maintained schools and
missionaries on most of these reserva-
tons, and after much devotion, sacri-
flee and patience on the part OF these
missionaries, quite a number of In
dians were baptized by them. A con-
siderable number of these baptized
none Catholic Indians have since Joined
| the Catholic Church, as being more
satisfying even to their crude powers
of reasoning and sense of devotion.
The Catholic missionaries, after climb
ing mountains of difficulty and dis
couragement, now feel that they have
reason to believe that as far as the
Indians are amenable to religion at all,
the majority may eventually be
brought under the influence of the
Catholic Church, supposing, of course,
a continuation of the heroic efforts of
the past. AS among the whites, so
with the Indians, there are always
some who are overcome by temptation
and even fall away entirely; but, as a
rule, the Sioux, to which branch prac-
tically all our Indians belong, are nat
urally apt pupils and make devout, in
telligent and sincere Catholics. The
Sioux boast that in the entire history
of the race they have never injured a
Black Robe, but, on the contrary, have
always reverenced and welcomed the
priest as the representative of better
and higher things. The Sioux are, at
the same time, inexorab1e reasoners,
and, once they have been made to see
the duties that spring from the facts of
faith, conviction with them becomes al
most compelling force.
The crucial test of the Indian is just
now on, since the government is be-
ginning to allot them their lands in
severalty, and to allow them to sell
the same, though fortunately still with
some restrictions. If the Indians can
be made, in SO short a time as one or
two generations, to become self-reliant
and self-supporting, besides learning
to withstand the bad example OF the
white settlers coming in among them,
| it will be little less than a miracle.
And, if at all, it will be possible only
because of the civilizing influence of
religion
This, therefore, is one of the large
problems confronting the Diocese of
Lead, the Indians forming so large a
percentage of our Catholic population.
To meet this responsibility we have
the Jesuit Fathers on the Pine Ridge
and Rosebud Reservations, the Bene-
Idictine Fathers on the Standing Rock
and Lower Brule Reservations, and
that intrepid missionary, than whom
there can be no better, Father John Vo-
gel, on the Cheyenne Reservation. The
i Jesuit Fathers conduct two Indian
schools, with the assistance OF the
Sisters of st. Francis, of Stella Mia
CARA. The government allows them 80
cents day for each boarder, which
sum, though considerable in the aggre-
gate, nearly $4,000 a year, is found
insufficient to meet all the demands of
the mission work satisfactorily.
4 On all the reservations the Indians
live in groups or camps, with leader