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Lace-Making Among the Indians

By Jane W. Guthrie

HE industries of all peoples are interesting from the ethical point of view; but an industry which becomes a great civilizing force should be suggestive not alone to the student of scientific and ethnological conditions, but to women interested in the problems of social advance and industrial development in the home.

It is generally conceded by sociologists that no real National advancement in America is possible so long as the rights of red man and black are neglected; and this thought, felt in its deepest significance by one woman, brought about the lacemaking industry among the Indians on the reservations in Minnesota.

So successful has this been that the art is now taught on many other reservations, notably those in Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Dakota, and there is a possibility

that it may in time assume large proportions.

The story of its inception is most interesting.

Bishop Whipple, who has labored among the Indians of Minnesota for more than forty years, has always deplored the evils of reservation life and faulty governmental conditions, has preached and taught the demand for some stimulating, elevating work for the women of the tribes, and the necessity for contact in some manner with the great world outside of the limited area allotted.

Miss Sibyl Carter, who was deeply interested in missionary work among the Indians, was impressed by these views and determined to make an effort to ameliorate, if possible, the condition of these helpless women.

While traveling in Japan, she saw the

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A LACE CENTERPIECE

native women working at lace-making; a noticeable similarity, in some respects, between the Japanese and the North American Indian, and the remembrance of the patient industry with which the Indian woman uses crude materials in her barbaric arts, suggested to Miss Carter the idea of teaching her the work which seemed so suited to the energies and capacities of her Japanese sister.

Miss Carter taught herself to make lace, using, as she says, books as guides and American perseverance as an aid; when she felt proficient in the art, she started to teach others.

Securing permission from Bishop Whipple, she went to White Earth, in the Ojibway Reservation, in 1890, and there began the work which she felt would be successful, once confidence and attention were secured.

By nursing in the hospital, teaching in the mission, and visiting among the families she soon familiarized the women with her ideas and plans.

Inducing a few to come for instruction, the little log cabin in the wilds of Minnesota became the scene of a most interesting experiment, for here Miss Carter taught her first twelve Indian pupils, and some of those who afterward became her assistants, how to make lace, beginning

with the simplest forms of pillow or bobbin lace.

No one, probably, but Miss Carter herself knows how much faith, hope, and energy was required in the effort. There are few who could so persistently struggle through the trials of those first months, for regularity in attendance was something unknown; but patience and example soon induced industry.

The wonderful results of two years' work made possible the opening of schools in the mission houses at Red Lake, Wild Rice Lake, and Leech Lake, in northern Minnesota; and, requests coming from the Sioux, or Dakotas, of southern Minnesota, a school was established at Birch Coolíe among those Indians, some of whom had known all the terrible tale of the New Ulm massacre in 1862. Ten short years have worked wonders. It is shown that the women are capable of great and sustained effort, that they have powers of idealization and the gift of inventiveness, producing, in some cases, new stitches and originating designs in both lace and embroidery.

These qualities are readily recognized by those familiar with the basketry, blankets, bead, and porcupine work of the Indian, a study of which shows the presence of deep artistic feeling and the use of what is just at hand in the suggestions of nature. The women come now and beg for work and teachers; they realize the elevating influence of daily toil and the dignity of labor for self-support-one of the fundamental necessities of the social structure.

The work is remunerative. Ten cents an hour is paid for steady labor; the general average is a dollar a day, but a very skillful and rapid needlewoman makes sometimes as much as twelve or fifteen dollars a week in summer-time.

Comfort thus becomes a possibility in some of those teepees and log cabins; cleanliness is a necessity, for not only must the work be kept absolutely spotless

to insure sale, but the surroundings of the needlewoman must be such as to make this possible.

The beautiful bedspreads made at Birch Coolíe are of pillow or bobbin lace. These have been bought by Mrs. Pierpont Morgan, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. Bayard Cutting, and other wealthy women interested in the work. They sell for two hundred and fifty dollars and upward. There, too, have been made the insertions for tea-cloths and bedspreads, the beautiful empire lamp-shade with Indian figures in canoes in design-all of which have been sent to the World's Fair at Paris.

The Dakota Indians are prairie Indians, while the Ojibway Indians are forest Indians. The Dakotas have been associated with civilized life for a longer period than the forest Indians, and it would seem that the arts of civilization might more readily appeal to them; but this is not demonstrated in the lace-work. The women of each tribe take up the art with a strenuous desire to help themselves and their people which is almost pathetic. There is so much of interest at the Birch Coolie Mission besides the lace-work.

The pretty little church of St. Cornelia is built upon the site of the massacre of 1862, on land earned by the daily toil of Good Thunder, the patriarch and counselor of the tribe, and donated by him for this purpose. It is named for the first wife of Bishop Whipple, and the money

A LACE COLLAR

for the memorial window bearing her name was earned by the sale of frogs' legs in the St. Paul market.

The lace made on the Ojibway Reservation is essentially different from that made at Birch Coolíe, and both are unlike the work done in Oklahoma, where the women make the exquisite old-fashioned cut-work. This is put together to form bedspreads and other articles with insertions made at Birch Coolíe, the designs for which are taken from rare old Italian, Venetian, and Flemish laces in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The needle point and English point are made on the Ojibway Reservation at White Earth, Wild Rice River, Red Lake, and Leech Lake. They are known as Honiton, Princess, and Battenberg. The lace made of the fine braids and threads is Honiton and Princess, the heavy braids and coarse threads are Battenberg; the various designs being known as Russian and Belgian. The price obtained for this lace is the guarantee of its excellence. It is not alone the fact that there is a sort of romantic interest attached to laces made by Indian women in rude wigwams which insures sale, but the exquisite quality would command a price anywhere.

The narrowest laces made cost fifty cents a yard; lace six inches wide is anywhere from twelve to twenty dollars a yard; doilies are a dollar and a dollar and a half; handkerchiefs from three dollars

up; centerpieces for the table, ten to twenty dollars and up.

Some of the most beautiful laces are those made for ecclesiastical purposes, for though the Christian Indian has a simple faith and knows the great truths of Christianity untouched by twentieth century subtleties, he has a vein of mysticism in him, a deep love of symbolism which demands the outward form of an inner faith.

This work, then, carries a spiritual as well as an artistic suggestion, and, appealing to the

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power of idealization as the awakening consciousness of the race, makes such lace beautifully perfect in handiwork. The lace is disposed of entirely through Miss Carter's personal efforts to patrons who have ordered it, or her committees sell it under the auspices of churches in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and the smaller cities.

In a box of finished work sent out one can find the tiniest edges for daintiest baby-clothes, wide laces costing eight and ten dollars a yard for decorative purposes, and that to put upon "my lady's" apparel, filmy and fine as a cobweb.

There, too, are boleros, lace jackets, berthas, fichus, vest-fronts, table and tea cloths-all the lovely, exquisitely fine and beautiful things into which common linen thread can be fashioned by hands of skillful needlewomen.

The lace now pays for itself, but the money for fuel in the schools, the salaries of teachers, etc., is all raised by Miss Carter.

When one realizes that last autumn Miss Carter sent a box of lace, made on the Chippewa Reservation in Minnesota, to Honolulu, and sold it there, the significance of the charity may be better understood.

After the pupil has thoroughly mastered pillow or bobbin lace, she is taught point lace; and when she becomes proficient, or has a family to care for, she is allowed to take the work home. Some of the skillful workers live many miles away from the Sa-sha ba-se-que, or lace-making woman. Through the forest, over frozen lakes in winter, the lace-maker trudges to the Rhor-do-ke-gan, or workroom, carrying her precious bundle of finished work next her heart, with fond anticipations of well-earned money. One of the most interesting of the northern schools is at Leech Lake, where Miss Pauline Colby is stationed. She is one of Miss Carter's most efficient aids. During the insurrection in October, 1898, she was urged to leave, but stayed bravely at her post through all the trouble, and tells with pride that no mission Indian took part in the insurrection.

One must go into United States history to get at the causes which induced the out

break; but while all the Chippewa Indians felt the injustice of their treatment, the Pillager tribe were instrumental in fomenting strife. These Indians are real savages yet, being exceedingly suspicious and conservative. They are called "blanket Indians" because they refuse to give up their savage dress or conform in any de gree to the habits of civilized life. They succeeded in ambushing General Bacon's troops on Bear's Island, in Leech Lake, where Major Wilkinson and some of his men were killed. It was altogether a most deplorable affair. Here, too, is the tract which is desired for a forest reserve, insuring, should the Government grant the petition, a perpetual home for the red man, where he will be untroubled by the grasping demands of the lumber speculator.

Many of the young men and women on this reservation have been educated either at the reservation or Government schools, but it is not the young woman alone who excels in lace-making. Many an old squaw, bent with age and the cares of wild life, to whom existence is a struggle, can show the most deft and dainty handiwork. She who has learned and practiced the arts of basketry, bead-work, porcupinequill dyeing, and weaving can produce lace equal to that made by the most skilled Flemish worker.

Miss Carter says: "Have we gravely considered the necessity of work for daily. wages for these poor people? On one occasion an Ojibway woman walked eighteen miles to White Earth to beg for a lace teacher, saying: 'There are many widows where I live, many little children. We no work, we have no bread, nobody buy bead-work any more. Give us your white work, so all white sisters buy, pay us money, then we take care all little children, buy bread, buy clean clothes.' I asked her where her husband was. She said: 'He cut wood, tree fall on him, kill him. You give work, I take care children.' I did give her the work she craved, and she made good her offer to care for her children. I know it is good to give garments to the needy, and that it is well to educate young Indians; but one foundation-stone of society is daily work. It brings daily bread, and I often feel it should precede education."

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To My Lady Clover

By Emma Lenore MacAlarney

Out in the meadow, 'mid daisies and grasses,

Wet with cool dewdrops and warmed by the sun,
Nodding so blithely to each one that passes,
Clovers are blossoming one by one.

Neighbor so friendly of birds in the thickets,
Chatting with linnet and shy meadow-lark,

Gossiping even to gay little crickets,

Breathing out perfume by day or by dark.

Hostess of bees, who have supped at thy table,
Reeling home, drunken with liquor divine,
Rarer by far than the nectar of fable,
Spicier, sweeter than Orient wine.

No flaunting rose, howe'er gaudy her gala dress,
Crimson, or perfect in pink or in white,

Shall e'er supplant thee, or cause me to love thee less,
Sturdy wee blossom, so fair to my sight.

Photograph by J. Horace McFarland.

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