AMERICA’S GENTLEMEN

Taranaki Daily News, 27 January 1934, Page 20 (Supplement)

AMERICA’S GENTLEMEN

RELIEF NOT WANTED HERE. PRIDE-AND DIGNITY OF RED MEN. That the fine pride and dignity for which they were famous in frontier days still distinguishes the American Red Indian is brought home to us by two little tales from the United States, says the Children’s Magazine. In the general distribution of . a 50,000,000-dollar Government Fund for road building, 30,000. dollars were set aside for a road through the territory of the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin. Instead of accepting it, as their white neighbours would have done and complaining that it was by no means enough, the Menominees have sent two delegates to Wc ’iington to explain that they cannot take it. The Menominees make their own roads at their own expense. For eighty years they have paid their own way, and they do not care to lessen their dignity by accepting a subsidy. There is such a thing as tradition, which

they beg the white man to respect. A Springfield newspaper, commenting on this picturesque says that they are setting an example to their white “civilisers” which is embarrassing. Another paper says they have given America a lesson in patriotism. From what is called the Gibraltar of the Desert, Acoma in New Mexico, comes the first 1934 membership in the American Red Cross, paid up well in advance by the redskin Albert Paytiamo, Governor of the Pueblo. The Pueblo is 7000 feet above sea-level, and contains about a thousand inhabitants. It is so inaccessible that when a Red Cross worker from Albuquerque. visited it the residents hastened to enrol, knowing that the chance might not come again for many moons.