Philadelphia Times, 12/12/1884, p. 1

A CONSIGNMENT OF SIOUX BRAVES AND PAPOOSES AT SCHOOL

Middle-Aged Warriors Who came East to be Educated – Naming the New Arrivals after American Statesmen – Too Long for their beds

The Educational Home, at Forty-ninth street and Greenway avenue, was invaded yesterday by a party of thirty-two Sioux Indians fresh from the Cheyenne Agency in Dakota. The young braves were collected and brought East by William M. Hugg. Most of them are young men who have been especially selected by the Indian agents as desirable candidates for education by reason of their rank or influence in the branches of the tribes they represent. They come East not only voluntarily but eagerly. Among them are warriors who carried rifles under Sitting Bull, but they have discarded the tomahawk and the scalping knife and will take up the slate pencil and the spelling-book.

The party left Dakota last Monday morning and were fed by contract all the way East. Yesterday morning they bankrupted a Baltimore eating house and shortly before three o’clock they arrived at the Broad Street Depot, where Joseph L. Springer, the superintendent of the home, packed them into an immense omnibus and rattled them out the Darby road to their new reservation.

The officers and teachers of the institution and the lady managers, under the leadership of Mrs. Bellangee Cox, had assembled at the basement door to welcome the Sioux.

A MOTLEY PROCESSION

Stolid and grave they marched up the path, falling into single file in true Indian fashion. At their head stalked Yellow Dog, a young brave of perhaps twenty-five summers. He stood six feet three inches in his moccasins and in manly vigor would have served Fennimore Cooper as a model for his Uncas. Yellow Dog was the one man in the party who spoke both English and Sioux and he had to serve as interpreter for the entire party. “Tell them to take off their hats as they enter the door,” said Mrs. Cox, and then she turned to the pale-face spectators and added: “It’s none too early to give them their first lesson in politeness.”

Yellow Dog grunted solemnly, waved his hand toward the dirty red ribbons and glass beads about the band of his soft slouch hat and said: “Ugh! Ugh! Lum-bor-kashwan-ti-hor-whanga-ree, ugh!” At the word of command every hat was doffed and the stolid features of more than one brave relaxed in awkward but good-natured acknowledgement of the smiles and bows of the ladies. Most of the now pupils had already had their hair cut, but several of them still wore their flowing manes of jet black or their long, thick plaits streaming down their backs. Some wore shoes, while others had not yet discarded their flashy yellow moccasins. Their clothing was by no means picturesque, Dirty blue shirts and patched trousers, such as Dorcas societies box up for shipment to mission stations, were the most favored articles of apparel. Young Feather Nose, however, who had come prepared for a hard winter, strode into the corridor perspiring under the shaggy folds of a huge undressed buffalo hide, which completely encased his sturdy frame like a great chrysalis.

TO BIG FOR THE BEDS

“Stand them up there in a row” said the matron, as the novices gathered in the large assembly room in the basement. Eight of the thirty-two were over six feet tall. The matron was worried. “My dear Mrs. Cox,” she said, “these fellows are too big for our beds and they will have to sleep on the floor until we can have some bedsteads made as long as they are.” Three of the party, Red Moccasin, Hooting Owl and Bellowing Coyote, are men nearly forty years old. Old Coyote, who was one of Sitting Bull’s crack shots, could never be induced to come East until he heard that his old captain had yielded to the blandishments of a theatrical manager last summer. Then Bellowing Coyote consented to let the Great Father give him an education, though he is already at the prime of life and must begin at the A B C book. Nearly half of the number were young bucks between ten and twenty years of age and two or three of them had scarcely passed the papoose stage of Indian life. Little Blue Hen, the only maiden who came East with her copper-skinned brothers, was torn from them and taken to the Lincoln Institute.

MEETING THE OLDER PUPILS

Abraham Lincoln, a bright young fellow who has made astonishing progress since he was brought from the Mohawk reservation, last September, was detailed to pilot the new matriculates through the school’s buildings. The greetings exchanged as the new arrivals met the sixty pupils who were already busy at their several tasks were often amusing. The Sioux braves peeped into the school room, where Mr. Lewis was spelling out the story of “a frog on a log” for the edification of the second class in spelling. They gazed on the slates, books, and black-boards with reverent wonder and the younger boys grinned broadly as they beheld the young Apaches, Creeks, and Arapahoes, who were plodding away in their neat blue blouses, with brass buttons.

The older pupils, according to the degree of civilization attained, either bowed a civil welcome or stared in stolid silence. A few of them snickered and hid behind their slates. The new arrivals were still more deeply impressed when they beheld the young Indians who were industriously tinkering at the cobbler’s bench or sitting cross-legged sewing a pair of trousers in the most approved tailor fashion. After they had seen their new home they were ordered, first of all, into the bath-tub. “After we have changed their skins,” said Superintendent Springer, “we have to go to work and change their names.” As the names of the various Presidents and American statesmen have already been pretty well exhausted by the sixty pupils already christened, the new arrivals are to be named for the bright and shining lights of the City Councils. Mrs. Cox delivered a little inaugural address, which was interpreted, sentence for sentence, by the gifted Yellow Dog, and then the Indians filed out of the corridor to take their turns in the bath-tubs.

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• Transcribed by HS 2024-08-28