CONTENTS OF NUMBER EIGHT. October, 1877. I. SUPERIOR INSTRUCTION IN SCOTLAND, HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT, PECULIARITIES OF SCOTCH UNIVERSITIES, II. VAN DER PALM-SCHOOL REFORM IN HOLLAND, - 691-704 MEMOIR-STUDENT-PREACHER-INSPECTOR, III. SCHOOLS AS THEY WERE IN R. I. Tenth Article, CHANNING'S REMINISCENCES OF SCHOOLS IN NEWPORT, 1800, I. JONATHAN EDWARDS-RESOLUTIONS FOR A HOLY LIFE, THE COLLEGE IN ATHENS, VI. SUPERIOR INSTRUCTION IN IRELAND, Continued, II. QUEEN'S COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITY, 1. COLLEGE AT GALWAY, 2. COLLEGE AT CORK, 3. COLLEGE AT BELFAST, III. CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, 691 699 1. THE COLLEGE SYSTEM WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY, 2. GENERAL VIEW OF CONSTITUTION AND HISTORY, 3. UNIVERSITY STUDIES AND STUDENT LIFE AT DIFFER 4. PRESENT CONSTITUTION AND CONDITION OF UNIVERSITY, 801-914 801 801 810 817 839 853 883 890 893 COLLEGES AND HALLS-MASTER-MEMBERS-RESOURCES, HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION. MISSIONS AND SCHOOLS FOR THE INDIANS. EFFORTS TO CIVILIZE AND CHRISTIANIZE THE INDIAN TRIBES. Before submitting some considerations on the purely instructional work which has been attempted with the children and youth of the Indian tribes now within the limits of the United States, we will note in the briefest possible manner the efforts put forth by societies and individuals under the auspices, more or less direct, of the governments, either of the mother country or of the colonies that exercised sovereign authority over the territory, to change the social condition and religious opinions and practices of these tribes. Any notice, however brief, would be grossly imperfect which did not mention the earliest missions of the Catholic church under the encouragement or express directions of the Spanish and French governments, although these missions were commenced and their directing authorities resided beyond our territorial limits and jurisdiction. The annals of Christianity will be searched in vain for more touching instances of religious obedience, of utter self-negation, of heroic endurance of pain and privation, and sublime devotion to duty, than the history of these missions presents. SPANISH MISSIONS. All the expeditions of discovery and settlement which left Spain after the genius of Columbus had given a new world to Ferdinand and Isabella, were accompanied by clergymen of the Catholic church, usually acting with the strength of some religious association. One of the first, if not the first body of missionaries, consisted of three Dominican friars who landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1510; they were followed in 1516 by a delegation of Jeronimites, who proceeded to Mexico, and, under instructions from Ximenes, organized their mission house, so as to employ an Indian, trained for this purpose, as sacristan, "who was to teach the children of the Caciques and principal men, and also to endeavor to make the adults speak Spanish." They were soon succeeded by twelve Franciscans, who had a convent at Huexot zinco in 1524. We will not follow the history of these Mexican missions, of which interesting details will be found in the original authorities given at the close of this chapter, and out of which the Spanish missions within the present limits of the United States sprang. The earliest Spanish mission, within the present limits of the United States, was attempted in Florida, in 1528, by a number of Franciscans, under the direction of Father John Juarez, who accompanied the expedition of Narvaez, projected in 1526 for the conquest of that peninsula. This attempt failed, and another scarcely more successful effort was made by Father Olmos, of the same order, in 1544, and by Father LouisCancer, a Dominican, in 1547, under the sanction of the sovereign, Philip II, who at the same time issued a royal decree restoring to freedom every native of Florida held in bondage. Both of these leaders were men of the highest culture, and indomitable zeal. The first, Father Olmos, came to Mexico in 1528, with Bishop Zumarraga, and soon mastered the language of the Mexican, Totonac, Tepeguan, and Guasteca Indians; in each of which languages he composed a grammar, vocabulary, catechism, and instructions on the sacraments The latter, Father Cancer, lost his life seeking in an unarmed vessel, and with an unarmed company, to plant the standard of Christianity among the natives of Florida. Other attempts were made in 1553 and 1559, by members of the same order, one of whom, Father Peter Martinez de Feria, prior and procurator of the Mexican mission, composed a grammar in the Indian language, for the use of the converts and teachers. A more successful mission was projected in 1562, consisting of eleven Franciscans, one father of the order of mercy, a secular priest, and eight Jesuits; a portion of whom were engaged in their labors at St. Augustine, in 1566. Two of the Jesuit fathers mastered the language by the help of natives found in Havana, where they composed a vocabulary, and commenced a school for Florida children. In this mission the Jesuits took the lead, Florida having been made a vice-province of the order, with Father John Baptist Segura as viceprovincial, and several fathers and brothers as colaborers; but at the close of 1568 they had met with so little success among the tribes of Florida and the regions north, which is now known as Georgia and Carolina, that they were about to report the mission a failure, when Pope Pius V, and the head of the order, Francis Borgia, came to their For the few facts presented in the following notices of the Spanish and French missions, the writer is indebted, mainly to Shea's "History of Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States," (New York, 1855,) and to the authorities cited therein, and to Parkman's "The Jesuits in North America," (Boston, 1867.) rescue. In a brief addressed by the sovereign pontiff, August 18, 1569, to Melendez, "viceroy in the province of Florida on the part of India." Melendez was enjoined not only "to faithfully, diligently, and care fully perform the orders and instructions given you by so Catholic a King, but by your discretion and habit to do all to effect the increase of our holy Catholic faith, and gain more souls to God. I am well aware, as you know, that it is necessary to govern these Indians with good sense and discretion, that those who are weak in the faith from being newly converted be confirmed and strengthened, and idolaters be converted and receive the faith of Christ, that the former may praise God, knowing the benefits of His divine mercy, and the latter, still infidels, may, by the example and model of those now out of blindness, be brought to a knowledge of the truth; but nothing is more important in the conversion of these Indians and idolaters than to endeavor by all means to prevent scandal being given by the vices and immoralities of such as go to those western parts. This is the key of this holy work, in which is included the whole essence of your charge." In the words italicised of this early document from the highest authority of the largest portion of the Christian church we have the key not only to such success as has followed the efforts put forth to civilize and christianize the Indian at any time and in any quarter by any ecclesiastical or civil authority, but to the lamentable failures which have too generally characterized these efforts. Habit, the schoolmaster of the race, the lawgiver of nations, the main reliance of the school and the family, has not been enlisted for successive generations to create and transmit new individual, family, and tribal tendencies, and to throw around these children of the forest, in whom the lower animal propensities have been nurtured and strengthened from infancy, and the higher intellectual and moral faculties have been at best only partially developed, strong although scarcely conscious restraints from temptation and constantly impelling influences toward a higher life. On the contrary, their lower propensities have been constantly fed by the vices and immoralities of the white race, and the restraints and encouragements which the best of any race find in the good example of the family, society and government, have not been felt. We will not attempt to give in detail the fortunes of this Florida mission. Following it, there was a succession of efforts by which Christianity was planted in New Mexico by Fathers of the Franciscan order in 1581, 1597 and 1601, which have continued to the present time; in Texas in 1633, and in lower California in 1601. In upper California the Jesuits inaugurated a mission which was continued with remarkable success until 1768, when they were violently removed by order of the Spanish government and succeeded by missionaries of the Franciscan and Dominican orders. These missions in New Mexico and upper California were conducted on the plan of gathering about the station a colony of Indian converts, with herds of cattle and a plentiful supply of implements for prosecuting the agricultural and mechanical arts. These missions were all interrupted or totally destroyed by violence. Of one of them, St. Gabriel, Mr. Bartlett, the United States commissioner on the Mexican boundary, in his "Personal Narrative," thus writes: "Five thousand Indians were at one time collected at the mission of St. Gabriel. They are represented to have been sober and industrious, well clothed and fed, and seem to have experienced as high a state of happiness as they are adapted by nature to receive. These five thousand Indians constituted a large family, of which the Padres were the social, religious, and, we might say, political heads. "Living thus, this vile and degraded race began to learn some of the fundamental principles of civilized life. The institution of marriage began to be respected and blessed by the rites of religion; grew to be so much considered that deviations from its duties were somewhat unfrequent occurrences. The girls, on their arrival at the age of puberty, were separated from the rest of the population and taught the useful arts of sewing, weaving, cording, &c., and were only permitted to mingle with the population when they had assumed the character of wives. "When, at present, we look around and behold the state of the Indians in this country; when we see their women degraded into a scale of life too menial to be even domestics; when we behold their men brutalized by drink, incapable of work, and following a system of petty thieving for a living, humanity cannot refrain from wishing that the dilapidated mission of San Gabriel should be renovated, its broken walls rebuilt, its roofless houses be covered, and its deserted halls be again filled with its ancient, industrious, happy and contented original population Whatever may be thought of the compulsory segregation of the Indian converts from fellowship with their own tribes, and from unregulated traffic and intercourse with European settlers, this treatment did not alienate the affections and respect of the Indians themselves, and at the same time it helped to train them to those habits of lifedress, occupation, manners, conversation, religious observances-which contribute powerfully to confirm the oral instructions of the school and the church. What would have been the ultimate results of this policy continued through generations, we can only conjecture. The missions were forcibly broken up, their teachers expelled, the settlements, with their herds, dispersed, and the Indians suffered to go back to their old associates and habits, and soon relapsed into a barbarism made worse by a deep infusion of the vices of civilized society. |