Viewing page 19 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-16-

consequence was, that the tribe was divided into two parties.  The one called the "Chief's party", being opposed to the education of their children and to farming, and the other called the "Young Men's Party", who favored education, desired to adopt the customs of the whites, and go to farming. 
 
Of the latter party, Iron Eye was the head, and a political war of the greatest bitterness was waged.  Iron Eye found that he had not only half of the tribe arrayed against him, but often the agent, the agent's employees and the authorities at Washington.  He often said to them: "It is either civilization or extermination."...

Iron Eye always gave the missionaries among the Omahas his sympathy and earnest understanding.  He was among the first to unite with the church after Father Hamilton came to the tribe....

The next Sunday after Iron Eye united with the church, the room in which public services were held would not hold one fifth of the Indians that attended. ...Finally Father Hamilton asked Iron Eye what made the Indians all at once take a notion to go to church in such large numbers.  Said Iron Eye...I ordered them to go.

Father Hamilton undertook to explain to him that the Christian religion could not be propagated that way.  (several days later)  The next Sunday, Iron Eye made an address to the Indians...the order was revoked, and from that time on the little Indian church built up its membership, who of their