Canku Ota

(Many Paths)

An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America

April 3, 2004 - Issue 110

The Indian Priest
Father Philip B. Gordon
1885-1948
Chapter 7 - Indian Problems

While Philip Gordon was growing up the Spirit Land of the Ojibway was fast disappearing. The young man was soon to experience the discrimination and degradation suffered by his people, and with realization came a determination to help them.

When the railroad came, the Indian's way of life was doomed. The appalling factor was the swiftness and cruelty of it all. The sudden bewildering adjustment is hard for the white man to comprehend. In one generation the heavy forests, which had supplied the Indian's home, his food, and his clothing, were swept away. In 1899 there were 1,033 sawmills in operation in Wisconsin and lumbermen 3,389,166,000 feet of lumber, more than two-thirds of which was white pine from the northern forests.

Philip Gordon was ambitious and worked to acquire the education he desired. He experienced life in a lumber camp during one winter where he helped with scaling and tallying. Later he worked for a period in a sawmill as a handyman, then tending a conveyor and picking slabs.

According to a brief note he jotted down late in his life, he was "fired and called down by George Moore, worked in company store for maybe two years. Deliveryman and clerk. Sickness: Sore knee, poor health. Other manual labor: Timekeeper when government furnished funds for road repair."

The rough and rugged life in the woods apparently helped to improve his health. He became well known in the Chequamegon Bay District as a baseball player. His notes also include brief reminiscences of baseball players and teams - "The Silver Dollar Baseball Team, Bert Walker, Basil Gordon. The Red Shots, The North Stars, Jocko Starr, Swan, Ed Walker, Hafaday, A. Gordon, and Sharlow. To north of Bad River several times, while in Odanah went to Minneapolis to see the Wisconsin & Minnesota game in the old Northrup Field with Dan Morrison and Mike Auge, the Pauly Hotel."

His baseball team competed with Arbor Vitae, Iron River, Washburn, Ashland, Saxon, Hurley and Hayward. The last game he played before entering St. Thomas College was at Hayward against his cousin Carley.

These notes were little reminiscences that came to a mind many years later and were rather rambling: "Two falls at public school. Teachers, Miss Dahrke or Mrs. Donohue. Away on Milwaukee trip for Donahue. Learned several Protestant Hymns, Blessed Assurance. Annual Methodist Camp meeting, Reverend T.C. Thomas, Reverence for Men of God, Indian Medicine dances, Lost Lake. In Superior for Normal School during Odanah stay, At parties, To Gordon for first return visit."

Years later, Fred Holmes and Dan Wallace considered writing a book about the Indian priest and encouraged hi to prepare an outline for a biography. They wrote, "Although he experienced the life of an adolescent in a lively reservation mill town, Philip never learned to dance, did not smoke and never tasted intoxicating liquor, and was looked upon as a 'good boy.'"

After a year at Superior, Phil attended Northland College at Ashland for a year. He established a friendship with his roommate and fellow athlete, Dan Brownell, who later became president of Northland College.

It was at the college that Phil became aware of girls. First there was Lena for a short time. Then there was Emma Heany. According to h is notes, he dated Emma for two winters and one summer in Ashland. They enjoyed ice cream socials in the Old Council Hall, went to the circus, and picked berries on the Ashland Road.

One of his college friends, John Medegan, a theological student and also a Chippewa Indian, suggested St. Thomas College, St. Paul, Minnesota, Minnesota, to Philip.

There were other Indians, including some of Philip's brothers, who were recognizing the need to adopting the white man's life and receiving an education in various professions. One of his brothers would become a doctor, one a lawyer and one a dentist.

Philip was concerned about the many Indians who could not be convinced they would have to change their way of life. Years later he was to say, "Indian traditions must be preserved, but in books."

The early French traders had always been friendly with the Indians and found them honorable and faithful in keeping their treaties and other obligations. They realized their fur trading business depended on preserving the forests and their good relations with the Indians.

Later settlers, however, desired land and lumber. Years of controversy and broken treaties followed. They expected the Indians to change in a few years to a point of civilization, which had taken their own ancestors centuries to accomplish.

By 1871 almost all of the Indians lands had been acquired. Most of the Indians were settled on reservations and repression was causing many problems - apathy, irresponsibility, drinking and delinquency. The Allotment Act of 1887 was to be the final solution of the problem. Each family group would receive 180 acres of land, which would be inalienable and tax-free for a generation. By that time the Indians were expected to have broken tribal ties and turned into ordinary farmers like their white neighbors.

The government soon realized that some might need more than one generation to get started as farmers, and provisions were made requiring that the Indian be declared competent to farm before the acquired his land patent no matter how long a time since he got his allotment.

By 1900 Indian population had increase so that the allotments were divided among more and more heirs with people inheriting small pieces of different allotments, widely separated from another. They could not compete with the larger, mechanized farms, which were increasing at this time. Once again the Indians were at the mercy of unscrupulous land grabbers.

In 1852, Luke Lea, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, had written:
"The embarrassments to which they (the Indians who resisted deportation and absorption) are subjected, in consequences of the onward pressure of the whites, are gradually teaching them the important lesson that they must ere long change their mode of life, or cease to exist at all. It is by industry or extinction that the problem of their destiny must be solved."

Now it seemed that extinction would be the solution. Lea did not foresee the results of the crushed spirits of the Indians.

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