PROTESTANT TESTIMONY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 309, 21 March 1879, Page 17

PROTESTANT TESTIMONY.

These is a military Court of Inquiry sitting at Chicago to determine whether Major Beno did or did not perform his whole duty in the Big Horn Battle, where General Custer lost his life. The most important witness in the case appears to be one Frederick Girard, who was Custer's favourite and confidential scout. Girard is described as a middle-aged, dark haired man of intelligence and sense. He began life as a printer in the office of the St. Louis Republican, and he has spent thirty-one years among the Indians of the Missouri River country. Unlike most frontier characters, Girard dresses in -citizen's clothes, and avoids loud trappings of buckskin coat and variegated fringes, but he is a brave, educated and experienced veteran. He married a good-looking Indian woman several years ago, and his lovely darkeyed daughters are now finishing their education in St. Louis. They speak and write the French language and are accomplished, and Mr. Girard is naturally proud of them, General Custer always stood by him and believed in him, and gave him perillous and responsible duties to perform in times of danger. We have nothing to say respecting the Reno business ; but, incidentally, Mr. Girard gave an opinion respecting the solution of the Indian question which is worthy of notice. He described a plan for their gradual civilization and then added that this should be carried out either by the army or by the Catholic priests. He said : " I think it should be left to the military department. I don't see how else it could be done, unless it was put in the hands of the Catholic missionaries : they are the only sect that can do anything with the Indians. In the first place their church ceremonies catch the eye and the mind of the redskins. There is something grand and imposing in them which makes a deep impression on the Indian character. Then, again, the missionaries are hard working men of blameless lives— men who seem to labour for nothing but the good of those among whom their lot is cast. The Indians know this, and they deeply respect, the Catholic missionaries, who are known among all the tribes as the ' Black Gowns.' " To show the influence of the priests over the Indians, Mr. Girard related several anecdotes. On one occasion the Berthold Indians had suffered from a drought. They went to Father De Smet and entreated him to say a Mass for rain. The Father promised to do so if they would cease trafficking in liquor and devote their hearts the whole of one day to the Great Spirit. The promise was given, the Mass was said, and before night it commenced to rain, and continued raining for four days. After that, up to the time of his death, Father, de Smet was looked upon as a big medicine man, and his word was law with the tribe. There are few things more hideous in history than the story of the recent massacre of the Cheyenne Indians at Camp Bobinson by our troops. If this is a*specimen of our army management of the Indians, the country will want no more of it. Mr. Girard's alter* native solution is the true one. But it should have been adopted fifty years ago. Now the cruel and unbearable wrongs inflicted on the Indians by the non-Catholic and anti-Christian policy that has been pursued has so exasperated them that the problem is greatly complicated. Nevertheless, if it were possible to expel from every Indian reservation the rascals who, under the garb of Protestant missionaries and agents, have systematically plundered the red men and enriched themselves, and to replace them by Catholic priests, incalculable good would be done. — Catholic Bedew.