November 1, 1931
The Daily Journal Capital
Microfilm Roll: MN00285
On this day in Osage country, an article was published in The Daily Journal Capital discussing the government’s attitude toward American Indians.
Assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, J. Henry Scattergood, visited the Osage Nation to evaluate the Osage Agency and gave a speech as guest of honor at a banquet in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
According to the Scattergood, the bureau was working towards “raising standards,” pushing for Indian children to attend public schools as opposed to attending Indian boarding schools which “take the Indian away from his home life.” Scattergood claimed that this would better pave the way for American Indians to attend “greater colleges where they [would] have better facilities than the Indian department could afford.” Both Chief BaconRind and Chief Lookout, who attended the banquet, expressed their gratitude towards the bureau’s future plans.
These plans were to set the United States apart from other European powers who have also colonized within the Americas. For example, Scattergood compared the “Indian commissioner with the British colonial secretary,” stating that the agency is like a large trust “in the sense that it handles Indian money and lands.” However like the British Scattergood claimed the bureau to be, he was certain that America’s treatment of American Indians was quite the opposite of Spain’s treatment of indigenous tribes in Latin America. He then went on to blame the Spaniards for “absorb[ing] the Indian race, marry[ing] them, [teaching] them the Spanish language, and [making] them a part of the Spanish race.”
Furthermore, Scattergood praises the Bureau of Indian Affairs in an almost heroic manner. The white man came in and helped the Indians “to conserve their resources” and taught “them to market their products;” for “it was the department’s idea to let the Indians run their own affairs and to replace white men and Indians in their own departments as soon as the Indians are capable.”
Morgan M. Guzman
“Indian Bureau Official Here to See Osages.” The Daily Journal-Capital. November 1, 1931, p. 1. Microfilm roll number MN00285. Sequoyah National Research Center, Little Rock, Arkansas.
