Custer Died For Your Sins Read online

  Often rows of sullen former warriors filled rickety wooden chapels to hear sermons on the ways of peace. They were told that the life of war was the path of destruction. Eternal hell, they were assured, awaited the man of war. Then the service would be closed with the old favorite hymn, “Onward, Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War.”

  An objective consideration of missionary efforts would indicate that the major emphasis was not religious conversion but experimentation with a captive culture. Western religion had failed to influence the society within which it was created. It had become a commodity for export long before Columbus discovered America. It had no choice but to attempt to gain a stranglehold on other cultures to reinstate itself. But its influence on Indian culture was comparable to that of other trade goods. Where it was useful, it was used.

  Indian people obediently followed the way of the white man because it was the path of least resistance. The Great Spirit was exchanged for Santa Claus with some misgivings. Substituting toys for spiritual powers created a vacuum, however, and the tribes secretly preferred their old religion over the religion of the Easter Bunny.

  The years from 1870 to 1930 were prosperous times, producing record harvests of red souls. Indian congregations were established in nearly every reservation west of the Mississippi. Many became self-supporting in a short time. By 1930 the majority of the Indian people had a tradition of three generations of church life behind them. Religious controversy centered on doctrinal differences unsolved by the denominations during Reformation days. Missionary work concentrated on such glamorous exploits as stealing sheep from another missionary’s fold rather than the de-paganization which had characterized the early mission work.

  The flower of tribal leadership served in the reservation chapels as laymen and helpers to the white missionaries. Many people hoped and expected that the mission status of Indian churches would soon be ended and they would receive full parish and congregational equality. Little did they realize that the Indian mission field had become a hobby in and of itself.

  Church piety required that the “finest young men” take up the White Man’s Burden and go abroad to save the heathen from their great darkness. Indian missions provided the only opportunity whereby young white clergymen could serve God after the mandate of Kipling and still enjoy the comforts of home. To release the Indian congregations to their own devices would have meant closing the only field in which traditional heroics could be achieved. A state of inertia set in.

  The white missionaries of the Depression years and later frantically tried to duplicate the exploits of Whipple, Whitman, Father DeSmet, and Charles Cook. There was still glory to be gained by being identified as the missionary to a certain tribe. This struggle meant an absolute rejection of Indian people as candidates for the ministry. Recognition of an Indian as an equal or possibly a superior in the missionary venture would have acknowledged that the Indian people had already accepted Christianity. Paganism, per se, would have ceased to exist and there would have been no need for white missionaries.

  The Depression missionaries were succeeded by a generation in which the mission field had been the glory spot of Christian work. Many arrived out West with the idea of finally completing the task started by the heroes of the faith two centuries ago. The new breed contemptuously announced that nothing had really been done by their predecessors. There were still Indians around and Indians meant pagans.

  The new breed was something to behold. Almost universally they expected the Indian people to come to them for spiritual advice. The older missionaries had made the rounds of their chapels faithfully. After a time, most of the old timers were converted to the Indian way of life and spent their declining years ministering in an Indian way to the people.

  But the new breed felt that the Indians were damn lucky they had come. Universally they downgraded Indian laymen. Often they changed patterns of worship and services that had been established for nearly a century. Quite a few had “days off,” when they refused to do anything, and most spent a great deal of their time either on vacations or at conferences learning about the relevant new movements of the modern world.

  The situation has not changed greatly over the past few years. Several years ago at a conference of missionary workers, a female missionary (somehow missionaries are able to achieve an asexual status) asked my advice on a problem she was having. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get her little Choctaw pupils in Sunday School to understand the “technical side of being saved.”

  In her church, it turned out, there were seven steps to salvation. When one understood the seven steps to salvation and was able to recite the sequence correctly, he was saved. Then his task was to teach others the seven steps until Jesus came. Apparently the Lord would ask all people to recite the seven steps on Judgment Day.

  Unfortunately I was not able to give her any insight into the task of getting six-year-old Choctaws to walk the seven steps to salvation, let alone memorize them. I asked her why, if it was so difficult to get them to understand, didn’t she move to a field which the Lord had spent more time preparing. She replied that the Baptists had had the children for some time and had left them terribly confused. Her first task had been to correct all the heretical theology the Baptists had taught them. She said that she wouldn’t dream of leaving and letting some other church come in after her and again confuse the children. On such incisive insights is Christian mission to the Indians founded.

  The determination of white churches to keep Indian congregations in a mission status is their greatest sin. But it is more a sin against themselves than it is against Indian people. For the national churches do not realize how obsolete their conceptions have become and they continue to tread the same path they walked centuries ago.

  The epitome of this blithe ignorance is the work of the Presbyterian Church among the Shinnecocks on Long Island. At a missionary conference two years ago, a Presbyterian minister, in charge of the Indian work for his denomination, described his church’s work among this tribe. Then he asked for questions.

  I asked him how long the Presbyterians intended to conduct mission activities among a tribe that had lived as Christians for over three hundred and fifty years. His answer to my question was representative of Christian attitudes toward Indian people today: “Until the job is done.”

  Christianity, which had laid the ancient world prostrate in less than three hundred years and conquered the mighty Roman Empire, has not been able in the same time period to subdue one hundred Indians huddled on Long Island. Needless to say, my faith was shaken to the core by this statement.

  * * *

  The impotence and irrelevancy of the Christian message has meant a return to traditional religion by Indian people. Tribal religions are making a strong comeback on most reservations. Only in the past few years have the Oglala Sioux and Rosebud Sioux revived their ancient Sioux Sun Dance. And this revival is not simply a re-enactment for tourists. The dance is done in the most reverent manner and with the old custom of piercing the dancers’ breasts.

  Pathetically, the response of the white missionaries has been to set up tipis and attempt to compete with the Indian religion by holding Masses and communions during the celebration. Nervously they try to convince the Indians that the Sun Dance and the Holy Communion are really the same thing and that Christianity is therefore “relevant” to the Indian people.

  In the Great Lakes area the old Medicine Lodge religion has been making inroads with the Chippewas and Winnebagos. Two years ago at an annual conference of the Wisconsin tribes, a panel of Indians discussed native religions. Eagerly the younger conference participants listened to the old men talk. They left that conference with the conviction that Indian religion was for Indian people and Christian religion was for whites.

  The Native American Church, famed for its use of the peyote button in its sacramental worship life, has doubled its membership in the last few years. It appears to be the religion of the future among th
e Indian people. At first a southwestern-based religion, it has spread since the last world war into a great number of northern tribes. Eventually it will replace Christianity among the Indian people.

  When I was growing up on the Pine Ridge reservation before and during World War II, the Native American Church was something far away and officially “bad.” Few adherents to this faith could be found among the two large Sioux reservations in southern South Dakota. Today a reasonable estimate would be that some 40 percent of the people are members of the Native American Church there.

  Indian people have always been confused at the public stance of the Christian churches. The churches preached peace for years yet have always endorsed the wars in which the nation has been engaged. While the missionaries have never spoken about this obvious inconsistency, Indian people have been curious about it for some time. So the element of Indian people who believe deeply in pacifism have looked to other places for a religion of peace.

  From the Hopi reservation has come a prophet of peace named Thomas Banyaca. He stands within the old Hopi religion and preaches to all Indians of their need to return to a life of peace and purity before the world ends. In 1967 Banyaca and some members of the Iroquois tribes traveled throughout the nation visiting the different reservations, bringing a message based on the prophecies of the Hopi and Iroquois. In June of 1968 Banyaca, “Mad Bear” Anderson, a Tuscarora prophet, and many of the traditional leaders of different tribes had two National Aborigine conventions in Oklahoma and New York to discuss prophecies of their religion.

  Banyaca’s message, and its ultimate influence, appears to me to be the most significant movement in religion in Indian Affairs today. Banyaca is very spiritual and highly traditional. He stands solidly within Hopi legend which looks at world history as a catastrophic series of events all of which the Hopi have been saved from. In the late fifties a Hopi delegation went to the United Nations to deliver a message of peace, as Hopi prophecies had required them to do. Legends said that should the Hopi delegation be refused entrance—as they were—the series of events foretelling the end of the world would begin. Banyaca’s message to other Indian people is to orient them as to the number of prophecies now fulfilled.

  The best statement of Hopi prophecy is contained in Frank Waters’ Book of the Hopi in which the end of the world as we know it is foretold. There is great similarity between Hopi prophecy and Iroquois prophecy regarding the end of the white man and the restoration of the red man to dominance on this continent. Many people, especially whites, laugh when they hear the Hopi prophecy, feeling that they are so powerful that nothing can overcome them. They forget that Indian gods still roam these lands and do not realize that the Hopi have incredible gifts from their gods which cannot be duplicated by any Christian missionaries; not even, people tell me, by the Pope.

  Even in the Northwest, Indian religions are on the move. The Northwest was supposedly converted by Marcus Whitman, early missionary to Oregon Territory. But those tribes, by and large, did not succumb to the word as easily as did tribes in other regions. People from Shoshone country tell me that the medicine men are more powerful there today than they were a century ago. Among the Yakimas the old religion still holds an honored place among the people. If and when native religion combines with political activism among the small tribes in western Washington, they are going to become extremely active in the coming Indian religious revival that many tribes expect in the next decade.

  Perhaps only in eastern Oklahoma has Christianity been able to hold its ground. Among the Five Civilized Tribes, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Chickasaw—called civilized because they were most like white men a century ago and have surpassed them in whiteness today—the Baptist denomination exerts great influence. This strength is due primarily to the large number of native clergy among the tribes. The Creeks particularly seem to have taken the Christian doctrines and made them their own. Native preachers exert tremendous influence among the Creeks and Cherokees. If Christianity is to have an Indian base of survival, it will be among the Creeks.

  * * *

  The dilemma of Christian missions today is great. National churches have committed two great mistakes, the solution of which depends upon their foresight and ability to reconcile themselves to what they have been preaching to Indian people for years.

  The different denominations have, over the years, invested an enormous amount of money in mission buildings and property. In the closing years of the last century, churches could receive a piece of tribal land simply by promising to conduct certain operations such as a school, hospital, or mission station. Consequently many of them applied for and received a great deal of tribal land.

  Now they are caught with property which is suitable only for religious use and with a declining religious following. What use has a church building other than as a church? National churches have continued to pour thousands of dollars annually into their mission programs simply to keep up the value of their investments. They must soon be prepared either to take a devastating paper loss as their congregations vanish or give the properties to the Indian people for their own use. Either solution is distasteful to the materialistic instincts of the churches.

  Added to the question of property is the obvious racial discrimination of the denominations against the Indian people, which is becoming apparent to the reservation people. Try as they might, the churches cannot admit that an Indian minister speaking in his native tongue to his own people is more efficient and more effective than a highly trained white missionary talking nonsense.

  The major denominations are adamant in their determination to exclude Indian people from the ministry. A number of devices, which skirt “official” pronouncements of concern for an indigenous ministry, are used to bar Indian candidates.

  One church refuses to admit Indians to the ministry because it is afraid that someday an Indian priest or clergyman may want to serve in a white parish. Indian ministers would not, by definition, be able to serve in a white parish. Therefore, the reasoning goes, they are not suitable for work among Indian congregations either. While they are welcome, I have been told, they don’t seem to be able to qualify.

  Other churches are frightened that when the sacred doctrines are translated into the native tongue, the subtle nuances created by theologians of the Reformation will lose some of their distinctions. A perfect example of this attitude happened at an orientation session for new missionaries which I attended in 1963.

  A Navajo interpreter was asked to demonstrate how the missionary’s sermon was translated into Navajo. So the white missionary gave a few homilies and the interpreter spoke a few words of Navajo. The trainees cooed with satisfaction that meaning could actually be transferred into a barbaric tongue like Navajo.

  One missionary was skeptical, however, and asked if there were specific words in Navajo that were comparable to English words. He was afraid, he said, that the wrong messages might be transmitted. So he asked what the Navajo word for “faith” was. Quickly the Navajo replied with the desired word.

  “Yes,” the missionary commented, “that’s all very nice. Now what does that word mean?”

  “Faith,” said the Navajo smiling.

  Nevertheless, many denominations are skeptical about letting Indians enter the ministry because of the possibility that doctrine may become impure. So they continue to send white missionaries for posts in Indian country to insure that the proper theological distinctions be drawn.

  With the necessity of keeping large missions open and by refusing to bring Indian people into the ministry, churches have had great difficulty in filling their mission posts. The glory of intrepid pioneering is now gone, and the glory seekers as well as the devoted have long since written off Indian country as the place for service and advancement. Staff positions go unfilled for months and often the first white who comes wandering in across the desert is hired to operate the mission stations.

  Some churches have an incredible turnover each spring and try a
ll summer to fill their posts. Eventually they find some white who is a former basketball coach, a retired editor, an interested layman, or an ex-schoolteacher and promptly hand over the mission lock, stock, and barrel without further inquiry. The fact that the new appointee is white is sufficient to cover any theological or professional shortcomings.

  Thus the quality of mission workers is at an all-time low. Most are not interested in their work and regard it as a job rather than a calling. Generally they have great contempt for the Indian people they are supposed to be helping.

  But probably worse, much mission work is done by white clergymen who are not capable enough to run white parishes. In most cases, the Indian field is their last stop before leaving the ministry altogether. They are hauled from pillar to post by frantic church officials desperately trying to shore up the sagging fortunes of their mission fields. A great deal of money is spent covering up disasters created by these white misfits. When they cause too much controversy in one place they are transferred to another and turned loose again. More money is spent on them than on recruitment and training of Indian people for church work.

  Pay is not high in mission work for either white or Indian workers. But it is universally higher for whites than it is for Indians. In the past there was some justification for a pay difference. Many Indian workers were only part-time workers and had another source of income. Gradually, however, Indian clergymen were assigned to remote areas and received less compensation.

  Often the pay scale is based primarily upon whether a man is white or Indian. Indians receive less pay, even with seminary training. And Indians are still assigned to the remote areas with the poorest housing and least facilities. Go out to any mission field today and examine the placement of church workers and clergymen. You will discover that white workers have the best assignments, the best houses, the best fringe benefits, and receive the most consideration for advancement from their superiors.