Part 50
“What are the ‘results?’ Certainly the residents are recognized as the friends of those about them. The children turn to them with the joy of every acquisition and the grief of every loss. The club boys of sixteen and seventeen years are proud of their connection with the house and eager rivals in its good opinion. Even some of the older women turn to the residents as friends upon whom they can rely. Those who know the work best do not look for results other than this friendly relation in any near future. The work, if it is anything, is a process of education. Character is not formed in a year. In all the club work the object constantly sought is helpful, personal contact. All methods are simply a means to this end. For this reason the number of members in each club is limited. If the higher is ever to give an uplift to the lower, must it not be through this method of friendship? Such a relation implies giving and taking on both sides, and the workers at the Settlement find one of the strongest points gained by residence to be, that their neighbors have a chance to do something for them, a chance which is often improved. The Settlement is one of the influences which go to form the lives of the people in Rivington Street. If it shall create any higher ideals or quicken any aspirations, if it shall awaken one soul to any sense of its own nature, the object of the College Settlement will surely be attained.”
Footnote 197:
See chapter, Woman in Medicine.—ED.
Footnote 198:
The story of the founding of the New York Infirmary, and the New England Hospital for Women and Children, is told in the chapter on Woman in Medicine.—ED.
Footnote 199:
NOTE.—I do not mean to claim that this result, which is very evident in the community, is entirely due to the establishment of women’s hospitals, for it is the consequence of a broader feeling for humanity in all institutions; but it is certainly a marked feature of women’s hospitals. This note will apply to all that I have said of hospitals. My subject is women’s hospitals, but I would gladly do justice to the good work done in all hospitals, if it were not too broad a field.
Footnote 200:
In New York city the Woman’s Branch of the New York City Mission sends out five nurses among the poor. These nurses have all had a full course of training at some hospital. This mission claims to be the first society in America to have introduced trained nurses in its work.
The Department of United Relief Works of the Society of Ethical Culture, organized in 1879, furnishes nurses to Demilt and New York Dispensaries. During the year 1888–1889 these nurses paid on an average 2800 visits to about 700 patients, including all diseases, even of the most infectious nature, and quite irrespective of creed and nationality.
The Mt. Sinai Training School supplies, at its own expense (being at present a separate organization from the hospital) from among its nurses not yet graduated, but experienced in hospital training, a nurse who administers to the sick irrespective of creed, nationality, or disease, under the direction of physicians attached to what is called “District Poor Service” of Mt. Sinai Hospital. Among the corps of physicians, all of whom give their services free, is one woman, Dr. Josephine Walter, who devotes on an average four mornings a week to this work in some of the poorest and most miserable districts of the city.
The order of Deaconesses, referred to in the chapter on Woman in Ministry, also act in the capacity of nurse. Among them are many regularly trained nurses who serve in the hospitals closely connected with the church.—ED. note.
Footnote 201:
See chapter on Charity.—ED.
Footnote 202:
See the story of Mrs. McFarland’s work, in “Alaska,” by Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D.
Footnote 203:
See “Mary and I,” by Rev. Dr. Stephen R. Riggs.
Footnote 204:
The latest and best edition is by Roberts Brothers, Boston, Mass.
Footnote 205:
This was Susan La Flesche, a sister of “Bright Eyes.”
Footnote 206:
This was The Women’s Home Mission Society of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, that of the Rev. George Dana Boardman, D.D., a society organized by the efforts of Mrs. Boardman, the gifted wife of that distinguished preacher and author, and largely in the interests of Indians.
Footnote 207:
See also the “Sketch and Plans” of The Indian Treaty-keeping and Protective Association, July, 1881, and “The Official Record” of The National Indian Association for 1882.
Footnote 208:
The petition was as follows:
_To the President of the United States, and to the Senate and House of Representatives_:
We, the undersigned men and women of the United States, resident in or near ——, do most respectfully but most earnestly request the President and the Houses of Congress to take all needful steps to prevent the encroachments of white settlers upon the Indian Territory, and to guard the Indians in the enjoyment of all the rights which have been guaranteed them on the faith of the nation.
Footnote 209:
This was as follows:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress Assembled_:
We, the undersigned men and women of these United States, resident in or near ——, do most respectfully, but most earnestly pray the Houses of Congress to take all needful steps to prevent the encroachments of white settlers upon the Indian Territory, and upon _all_ Indian reservations; also to keep all treaties with the Indians until they are changed by the mutual and free consent of both parties, and to guard them in the enjoyment of _all_ the rights which have been guaranteed them upon the faith of the nation.
Footnote 210:
MEMORIAL LETTER.[211]
ACCOMPANYING THE INDIAN PETITION OF 1881.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress Assembled_:
The men and women of this nation herewith present their second petition to your Honorable Body for the faithful fulfillment of treaties and other guarantees given by our government to the different tribes of Indians within our borders. Your petitioners do not suggest any political policy to be pursued, leaving such matters to wise statesmanship. They come with but one thought, conviction, prayer. The thought recognizes the _moral obligation_ of nations, as of individuals, to keep compacts. The conviction is that recognized moral obligation should result in the _fulfillment_ of such obligation. The prayer is for such fulfillment as being ever, we believe, the _highest political wisdom_, the truest national safety.
An objection has been made by some to treaty-keeping with Indians, on the ground that the Indian tribes among us were never “nations,” and that, therefore, so-called “treaties” with them were never _real_ treaties. Your petitioners, with deep feeling recall the fact that _our government_ has for a hundred years recognized these tribes as “nations,” in its hundreds of compacts with them calling the latter “treaties,” and has, by Acts of Congress, bound itself faithfully to observe all such made in the past, though deciding to make no new treaties with Indians. Your petitioners, therefore, pray, for the sake of national honor, which demands honest dealing with all men, that the terms “nation” and “treaty” may be kept to the heart as they have hitherto been made and explained to the ear.
Again it has been urged that the law of _eminent domain_ nullifies these treaties, and requires our government to take legal jurisdiction of Indian lands, to divide the same in severalty, and to open the remainder for white settlement. Your petitioners are deeply impressed that for any government to apply the law of eminent domain to the property of others than its own citizens, is to necessitate, if there be resistance, a war of conquest,—a measure wholly opposed to the fundamental principles of this government,—and that Indians, with few exceptions, are not citizens of the United States, but are under their own legislative and executive authority, as in the Indian Territory, and this by the terms of our sales of territory to them, and their titles to the same.
Your petitioners therefore present their memorial to your honorable body, feeling that the plea for treaty-keeping is a protest against any enactment of Congress which would extend legal jurisdiction over territory not under the control of this government, and which would do this, as for example the Oklahoma Bill proposes, contrary to explicit treaty stipulations.
Finally, your petitioners would express the earnest conviction that the nation, which has spent five hundred millions of dollars on Indian wars growing out of the _violation_ of treaties, can best afford to make it to the interest of the Indian tribes among us _voluntarily_ to become citizens of the United States, and not by the coercion of Acts of our Congress.
Our petition of last year was from fifteen States; that of the present year represents every State of the Union and several of the Territories; and has many more than double the number of last year’s signatures. The work of circulating the petition, and accompanying pamphlets, has been done by few persons, and chiefly by Christian women already busy in benevolent work; yet the roll contains the names of people of all occupations and in all ranks of society; of great business firms and manufacturers; of distinguished men and officials; of judges, governors, and ambassadors to foreign courts; of authors and editors; of the faculties and students of not a few of our most noted collegiate and theological institutions, and of literary and art associations. Besides all these, the roll includes the signatures of women’s mission boards, Christian associations, and other benevolent societies; the names of pastors and bishops of the churches; also the records of the indorsement of a rising vote from various church-meetings of different denominations; of meetings held specially to consider the Indian question; of minister’s unions in different towns and cities, and of various other bodies. All these and many other evidences reveal the fact that the _moral sentiment_ of those classes who largely make and control public opinion already requires governmental faithfulness to our Indian treaties. For this your petitioners most earnestly and respectfully pray.
AMELIA S. QUINTON. _Secretary of Indian Treaty-Keeping Committee._
Footnote 211:
This said:
_To the President of the United States, and to the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress Assembled_:
We, the undersigned men and women of these United States, do most respectfully but most earnestly pray our President and your honorable body:
1. To maintain all treaties with Indians with scrupulous fidelity until these compacts are modified or abrogated by the free and well-considered consent of the Indian tribes who were also parties to these treaties.
2. That since the number of Indian children within the limits of the United States does not probably exceed sixty thousand, or one-third the number of children in the public schools of some of our larger cities; and since treaties with many tribes already bind our government to provide a teacher for every thirty Indian children among these tribes: therefore we pray that a number of common schools, sufficient for the education of every child of every tribe, may be provided upon their reservations, and that industrial schools also may be established among them.
3. We pray that a title in fee-simple to at least one hundred and sixty acres of land may be granted to any Indian within the reservation occupied by his tribe, when he desires to hold land in severalty, and that said land shall be inalienable for twenty years.
4. We also earnestly pray for the recognition of Indian personalty and rights under the law, giving to Indians the protection of the law of the United States for their persons and property, and holding them strictly amenable to these laws; also giving them increased encouragements to industry, and opportunity to trade, and securing to them full religious liberty.
MEMORIAL LETTER OF THE INDIAN TREATY-KEEPING AND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION, PRESENTED WITH THEIR PETITION FOR 1882.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress Assembled_:
Again the women of a national Indian association beg leave to present to your honorable body the petition they have circulated and received again from the people of the United States. Their roll represents, at a low estimate, considerably more than a hundred thousand citizens,—instead of thirteen thousand as did their first, three years ago,—and is an earnest plea for a righteous, speedy, and permanent settlement of the Indian question.
Among the petitioners are many hundreds of churches, which have adopted the petition by a unanimous rising vote, this often having been taken at a regular Sabbath service; various popular meetings have also here presented their plea, similarly expressed; while the roll contains names of members of legislative bodies, of governors, judges, and lawyers; names of bishops and of many hundreds of the clergy—among the latter the entire ministry of three denominations in the city of Philadelphia and numbering nearly three hundred; names of the professors and students of theological seminaries like those at Hartford, Cambridge, Rochester, and Upland; colleges and universities like Yale, Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Rochester, Washington, and Lee; names of editors of leading periodicals; the boards of hundreds of missionary and other benevolent societies, not a few of these being national ones; with names of art, literary, and social clubs. Besides all these, the roll contains the signatures of hundreds of business and manufacturing firms, who control capital to the amount of many millions of dollars, and who employ many thousand operatives—all showing that not only has there been a rapid growth of sentiment among the religious and intellectual leaders of the community, demanding legislation which shall end oppression of Indians and secure to them full opportunity for industrial, mental, and religious development, but that the commercial interests of our land also are fast coming to demand a just and speedy settlement of the Indian question.
Permit an expression from the association who to-day present to your honorable body their third annual petition,—an association having sixteen State committees and one in each of the larger cities, with helpers in every State, all these committees being composed of patriotic Christian women; permit these to say that into their ears and hearts comes the cry of suffering, undefended, ever-endangered, Indian women and children, and that this cry is our appeal to you to secure for them legal protection; that the plea of Indian women for the sacred shield of law is the plea of the sisters, wives, and mothers of this nation for them, the plea of all womanhood, indeed, on their behalf to you as legislators and as men. Permit us also to say, that in laboring by every means in our power to fill our land with a knowledge of the present condition of Indians, and of our national obligations to them, we most deeply feel, that while justice demands the recognition of Indian personalty before the law, thus most surely and simply, it seems to us, securing to Indians protection and fostering care, we yet feel that legislation securing this recognition will be an honor to the present Congress and to our beloved country. For this legislation we most earnestly and respectfully pray.
Footnote 212:
One paragraph will perhaps be an encouragement to those organizing similar women’s movements hereafter: “Under the head of ‘Meetings Held,’ the New Hampshire branch reports twelve ladies’ meetings and a crowded mass-meeting; the Massachusetts Association reports eleven ladies’ meetings and a very successful mass-meeting in Tremont Temple; Connecticut reports fourteen ladies’ meetings and two mass-meetings; New York City has had various ladies’ meetings and a mass-meeting in Rev. Dr. Hall’s church; Brooklyn has had thirteen ladies’ meetings and two mass-meetings; Philadelphia, including local auxiliaries and meetings of the National Executive Board, has had about forty ladies’ meetings and five mass-meetings; Baltimore has had eight ladies’ meetings and two mass-meetings, and Washington sixteen ladies’ meetings and four mass-meetings. Regarding the distribution of leaflets, New Hampshire reports 5500 sent out, with 401 petitions; Connecticut 5000 leaflets, and petitions sent to all her towns; Maryland has sent leaflets to fifty towns and secured petitions representing 21,000 citizens. Of articles in the press, New Hampshire has sent sixty, and Philadelphia over a hundred. Brooklyn has raised $325; New York, $405; Boston, $724, and, naturally, being the home of the movement, Philadelphia has raised more than these and all other auxiliaries combined.”
Footnote 213:
See “Protection of Law for Indians,” by General J. B. Leake; “The Indian before the Law,” by H. S. Pancoast, Esq.; “Our Indian Wards,” by Col. George Manypenny, and “Our Wild Indians,” by Col. Richard J. Dodge; “The Indian Question,” by G. W. Owen, pages 90–97 and 639–650.
Footnote 214:
That of January, 1883, said:
We, the undersigned citizens of the United States, resident in or near ——, viewing the results of our past national Indian policy; viewing also the present positions and relations of the white and Indian races within our borders, and being convinced by many considerations, both moral and political, that only that Indian policy is just, and therefore wise, which has for its ultimate aim citizenship for Indians, through the abolition of the reservation system by granting to all Indians, not now under the Indian Government of the Indian Territory, lands in severalty, with the same titles, law protection, property rights, common school education, and religious liberty enjoyed by other races among us:
Now, therefore, we do respectfully but most earnestly pray that such a policy as above suggested may be adopted and in future pursued, having due regard to the principles of equity and justice involved in past treaties with Indians, yet granting to them upon their present reservations as fast as individuals so desire (and we pray that our Government will generously allure them to this desire).
FIRST: Lands in severalty, with fee-simple titles, inalienable for thirty years.
SECOND: The same law-protection, legal personalty and citizenship that white men and black men enjoy.
THIRD: Adequate common-school and industrial education upon their present reservations, and,
FOURTH: Full religious liberty.
Footnote 215:
See chapter Woman in the State.—ED.
Footnote 216:
See chapter Woman in Literature.—ED.
Footnote 217:
See chapter Woman in Literature.—ED.
Footnote 218:
Ohio.—ED.
Footnote 219:
I have steadily refrained from adding biographical notes on the authors of the chapters of this book, notwithstanding the fact that they themselves, in having accomplished so very much on the very lines of progress which they have set about to describe, have deprived us of much that could have been gracefully added, had they been less fully identified with their subjects. Between the lines, however, much may be gleaned; and to relate the lives of such women is to presume ignorance on the part of the reader; a presumption of which a discreet editor would never be guilty.
But when, through excess of modesty, the ignorance of the editor of this book is delicately held up as a proof of the lamentably universal ignorance on the subject of the Red Cross, the awful dignity of the editor is aroused! Without the following explanation or extenuation, moreover, I do not see how the chapter in question could have any place in the book. “Woman’s Work in America” can hardly be made up of histories of work which is emphasized as “_the work of men_,” no matter how gracefully apologized for.
Therefore the following little sketch of a _woman’s_ work in the direction of originating and applying the methods of the Red Cross in this country, written by one connected officially with the society is presented, with the editor’s apologies to the modesty of the President of the Red Cross: “It is with great pleasure I am permitted to add a few words of explanation to Miss Barton’s story of the Red Cross, and in as brief a space as possible present the colossal magnitude of this remarkable woman’s work on Battlefield, in Hospital, amid Cyclone, Fire, and Flood; Standing ‘_alone_’ among women even as a Napoleon or a Lincoln does among men.
“Endowed by nature with a dual being, as it were; possessing the strong, reasoning, powerful brain of a leader and the gentle, tender, loving heart of the most delicate of women, Clara Barton stands before us a symbol of what woman might be when she bursts the bonds that dictate to her ‘woman’s work.’
“Confined in this note to the relation of Miss Barton with the ‘Red Cross work,’ I still consider it fitting to suggest that the services rendered by her in the war for the Union, in organizing, conducting, and leading the service of field nurses upon actual battle-fields, in directing hospital organization, in managing other details of field relief, and, more than all, in conceiving and carrying out the great work of tracing and recording the fate of many thousands of missing soldiers, were naturally and necessarily a proper prelude to the great service she has since rendered in European combat, in presenting the Geneva Treaty to her own government, and in so broadening its field of service as to include that of help in great natural and national calamities.
“Miss Barton has herself explained the object of the Geneva International Committee; and has given an account of the long-delayed acceptance of the Treaty by the United States.
“In 1870 Miss Barton joined the Red Cross workers in the Franco-Prussian War. We see her leading in beneficence in Strassburg; working day and night organizing the frightened and bewildered women and children; not doling out charities, but vitalizing and making them self-reliant by work; presenting the truest of all ways of helping themselves by helping others. In sober words, Miss Barton’s work in Strassburg was the founding of workshops and the employment of women and others to labor therein. So successful was she that when Metz passed into German hands, with loaded cars, bearing clothes and food, she entered that city again to help the stricken inhabitants; afterward in Paris, at that awful hour when the ‘Commune fell,’ and the streets were black with fire and red with blood, we see this American woman reaching the stricken city with her train of garments, ready for the naked; hope and comfort following in her path; healing and binding wounded bodies and minds. She was called on by Monsieur Thiers himself, and honored as few men are. The cross of the Legion of Honor should be among her rewards, but the law governing its bestowal is that it be formally solicited by the one by whom it might be received.