HOMESICK INDIAN MAIDENS

SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF BRAVES PINING FOR THEIR HOMES ON THE PLAINS

The Managers of the Lincoln Institution to Send Then Back Tomorrow - One Hundred Girls to go to their Summer Home at Wayne This Morning.

This morning at half-past seven o’clock on hundred Indian girls will march two by two from the Lincoln Institution, on Eleventh street, to the Broad Street Station, with Superintendent Hugg at their head. At 8:15 o’clock they will enter two special cars and go to their new summer home at Wayne, which has just be been completed. They will remain there until the 1st of October. Matron Hugg, House-mother Winchell and Miss Annie Allen and Miss Hall, the teachers, will be there to receive them; so will Mrs. John Bellangee Cox, one of the Board of Managers. All day yesterday the Indian girls were busy packing their trunks and valises and tearing up the winter home in preparation for their departure. They sand and laughed by turns, and spoke of the home at Wayne as the “Sun House.” Last night trunks and boxes and bags were scattered through the hallways of the Lincoln Institution. The girls sat about on them until bedtime, impatient to start. Superintendent Hugg said they wouldn’t sleep much last night, because they wanted to get to the country. Furniture cars were loaded during the day with chairs and tables, and carpets and pots, and pans and kettles and taken to the new home. Superintendent Hugg said that everything would be apple-pie order out at Wayne in a day or two.

SEVEN HOMESICK INDIAN GIRLS

There are seven Indian girls at the Lincoln Institution who will not go to Wayne today. They will never go there, for they have bee pining for months to go back to their homes in the far West. They did not sing last night with the other girls, but sat moping about her and there with long sad faces. They wouldn’t talk, except about “going to the home far away.” They will leave for the far West tomorrow night. J. Topliff Johnson is going to take them home. He went to Washington on Saturday to arrange with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the transportation of the girls. They are very homesick. Clara Richardson, whose Indian name is Lucy, is one of the first Indian girls brought to the institution. She came on September 8, 1883. She has consumption. She is a Sioux and belonged to the Sans Arc band of which her father, Bull-on-the-Hill, is the chief. She will be taken to the Cheyenne River Agency in Dakota. Louisa Robinson, who is known by the Ogalalla band of the Sioux as Winnan, will go to the Pine Rige agency. Ellen Hansel, whose father, Fly-over-the-Clouds, is a bold brave in the Digger band of the Modocs, is known as Wassaka. She will be taken to the Cheyenne Agency. Annie Rencontre is a pretty girl. She is known as Wihake. She belongs to the Lower Brule band of Sioux, and will be sent to the Rose Bud agency. Her mother is blind.

THREE HOMESICK SISTERS

Milly Schmidt, aged seven; Amy Schmidt, aged nine, and Sophie Schmidt, aged thirteen, are sisters; they belong to the Uupper Brule band of the Sioux and will be sent to the Rose Bud Agency. These three sisters are very homesick. They want to see their father, who is an interpreter at the agency. Milly’s Indian name is Winona; Amy’s name is Hopana, and Sophia is known at home as Zintkatowin. They didn’t seem to realize last night they were going back home. None of the homesick girls did. They all seemed to distrust the promises that they were to be taken home. Little Milly Schmidt said:

“We have seen the great city, the white people, who have been very kind to us; the steam cars and all the wonderful things and now we want to go home to see our father and stay with him. Superintendent Hugg is a nice man, so is Mrs. Hugg and House-mother Winchell and the teachers. Everybody is kind to us, but we are tired here. We want to go home.”

After this little speech little Milly looked at her sisters and then all three began to boo-hoo. These three little Indian maids were brought to this city from St. Mary’s School, in Nebraska, at the time it was burned down. Bishop Hare has since had the school rebuilt and he wants the three sisters to come back again.

AN INDIAN BOY WHO OWNS A RANCH

From the Indian Boy’s Home at Forty-ninth street and Woodland avenue one of the boys is to go with the party. He is homesick, too. His Indian name is Toteanka and he is known at the Home as Basil Claymore. He is a good-looking young brave, fourteen years old, and belongs to the two Kettle band of the Siouxs at the Cheyenne Agency. Superintendent Hugg brought him from the West on December 11, 1884. Ever since he has been here he has been a hard worker. Last summer and this summer he spent at Mrs. John Bellangee Cox’s country place, “Ivy Croft,” at General Wayne. Toteanka is known by the farmers of that part of Delaware county as a hard worker and he has the reputation of being a thorough farmer. He owns a cattle ranche in the far West and he wants to get back to it. His father is very old, and Toteanka said last night he wanted to be home so that his father could die in his arms.

Dr. C. McClelland, the visiting physician of the Lincoln Institution, says that no medicine can cure the homesickness of the Indians. The only effective prescription he knows of is to send them back to their people and their native hunting-grounds. When they get homesick they mope and mope and pine away. They become inactive and lose their appetite and their health.

Source: The Philadelphia Times, Tues., Aug 3, 1886, p. 4