"The priests planned to have the Indian students being trained at the missions to marry each other upon graduation, and to be given land near the mission, so that their civilized-Christianized lifestyles would serve as proper examples to their savage Indian neighbors. This system of vocational education was directed to teaching basic life skills, with the goal of producing self-supporting white-oriented Christian Indians. The Indian children were drilled with daily mass, religious instructions and devotions, and there were morning and night prayers in common, the daily Rosary, Benediction every Sunday, the "Angelus" prayer three times daily, and prayer before and after classes and meals. Father Grant wrote "It is difficult to instill in the students a true spirit of ferver, since they do not have very fervent parents." Special Agent Horatio L. Seward reported that of the surviving population of 1,811 Piegan Indians on the Blackfeet reservation out of over 7,800 Indians prior to contact; "Perhaps 5% of these Indians are Roman Catholic and the others are Sun worshippers."
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau
pg.25
No comments:
Post a Comment