INDIAN REPUBLIC—ALMOST A ROMANCE.

Colonist, Issue 13, 4 December 1857, Page 4

INDIAN REPUBLIC—ALMOST A ROMANCE.

The iSt: Paid Advertiser gives some highly interesting particulars of an Indian Republic, which read like a chapter of romance. We quote as follows:—

"Away upon the head waters of the Minnesota, some forty miles above Ridgely, in a corner of" the miserly strip of territory of which the usufruct was reserved to the Dakotas, all that remains to them now of the magnificent heritage in which they were born, in the wilderness-home of seven thousand savages, the very hades of Indian barbarism, yet dim with ghostly songs and legends, the philosophers of France, and the. poets of European regeneration have been outstripped by the Dakato hunter, and a veritable republic—organised, representative, free, with a written Constitution and a code of laws, has been established on the banks of the Yellow Medicine.

"A community of Dakato Indians, including some t-.venty-five families, renouncing the tribal system and habits, the superstitions and costume of their race, leaping at a single vault across centuries of barbarism, have adopted at once, by unanimous consent, the customs, the dress, and at least the elementary ideas of civilised society. "The traditional principle of the community of property has been abandoned, the whole tribal fabric dissolved, .and society reconstructed on the basis of justice to the individual, and its relations adjusted on the principle of individual responsibility. For this new order of things, a methodical organisation has been effected, in which all male adults are represented, and in which all directly participate. A President and secretary are regularly elected. A constitution and code of by-laws are written, and the right of property recognised and defined. This is an abrupt transition, certainly, and presents the phenomena not of growth but of transformation.

" One finds the savage hunter of a year since, dressed to-day in the costume of the white man, the hair cut short and the paint and ornaments discarded, living in neat houses, of the simple but comfortable architecture usual in frontier settlements, with an enclosed field of four or five acres around him tilled with the implements of modern husbandry. The Indian woman, released from the despotism of tribal prescriptions, is no longer a beast of burden, but attends to the gentle duties of the household, while the husband accepts with pride the toil he had disdained.

"The interior of these little houses, usually built of logs, reminds one of the simple and innocent cottagfe life of the exiled Acadians. The rude furniture, fashioned by their uneducated skill, is in everything an imitation of civilisation. The idea of comfort precedes the idea of elegance in the growth of mind, and ordinary .com-r forts are still novelties in Indian life, to which the sentiment of property, itself a novelty,. gives a new charm. The rough bench or chair, the bed or bunk, curtained with mosquito gauze, the iron stove, the various utensils of cookery, the set of table ware upon the high clean shelf, the lock and trunk, the suspended picture, the well filled larder, and the cultivated garden outside, enclosed with neat fences, all attest the gradual development of the principle*of acquisition, and the renunciation of the lazy doctrines of community. To one familiar with the bleak, comfortless, entirely animal life and reckless improvidence of the Dakatos, this domestic picture, sketched on that harsh and . desolate back ground, appeals with the force of domestic contfast, while it has for the student the interest of a new phase of historical development, of which the conditions are new, and the causes not apparent. •

" And what power wrought this radical revolution in the midst of the Dakatos? Was it the spontaneous development of a latent tendency accelerated by the exigencies of" the new mode of life, forced on them by the policy of the Government ? Was it: the reflex influence of the civilisation which surrounds them ? Perhaps these had the effect of suggestions or of arguments. But the Hazlewood Republic was the fruit, in fact, of long years of thankless toil and of heroic self-sacrifice, the tardy result of the despised labours of the Dakato missionaries. Two excellent men, Rev. Dr. Williamson, and the Rev. S. R. Riggs, who have devoted their lives to the evangelisation of the Sioux, find in this the first sheaf 4 of the harvest which is springing from their joint labours. Mr. Riggs is a cultivated scholar and the editor of a valuable Dakato grammar and dictionary. "It is around the,mission house of this gentleman, that .the Hazlewood Republic has established its settlement; and its members, many of whom can read and write Dakato, some of them even English, are composed chiefly of his pupils and converts. It was under his auspices that the Hazlewood Republic was organised some two years since. The members, the male adults voting, have elected * Paul' their President, and' Hennuek,' Secretary. The latter was educated somewhere at the East. The thrift of these people in their new mode, of life, may be inferred from the fact, that Major Flandrau, the agent for the Sioux, to whom we are indebted for the principal details of the above narrative, recently bought 400 bushels of potatoes and 500 bushels of corn from them.

" The Major informs us that their accounts against the Government are unusually _ attested by vouchers in their own handwriting. It is his design to encourage by every possible means this forward movement among the Sioux. No portion of the school fund provided by the treaty, had been appropriated until a small portion of the sum due, 4000 dollars in all, was received by.him. A part of which was expended in the establishment of a Dakato school in the Republic, taught for the present by a native Indian.

"At the Red Wood, agency, we should not forget to mention, a. similar settlement of Indians has commenced, and now numbers some eleven or twelve families."

A Novel Condensed.. — Moonlight night—shady grove —tw lovers—eternal fidelity—youngs lady rich—young man poor—great obstacle—young man proud— very handsome—very smart —sure to make a fortune—young lady's father very angry —won't consent—mother intercedes—no go —rich rival—very ugly—-very hardhearted—lovers in a.bacffix—won't partdie first—moonlight again— garret window" opens—rope ladder—flight—pursuit—too late—marriage—old man in a rage-»-won't forgive them—disowns them—old man gets sick—sends for the daughter—all forgiven—all made up—old man dies—young couple get all the money—live in the old mansion—quite comfortable—have little: children—much happiness—finis. Five Outs and One In.—A poor Yankee on being asked what was the nature of his. distresses, replied " that he had five outs; and one in ; to wit, out of money, and out of. clothes; out at the heels, and out at the toes; out of credit, and in debt." It would be difficult for any of our victims to match this.