In the 10,000–meter run at the Olympic Games in Stockholm Tewanima won second place. He is a full-blood Hopi Indian and is considered America’s greatest long-distant runner. Educated at Carlisle. ]
World’s Champion All-Round Athlete, Winner of the Pentathlon and the Decathlon, Stockholm, 1912. Educated at Carlisle. ]
“The tribal funds on deposit in the Treasury of the United States are approximately $2,000,000, gathered from fruits of their own toil and in the sale of their timber products.
“The tribe numbers about 1700 souls. Statistics show about 575 able-bodied males, aged 18 years and over. Labor figures for the reserve show of this number an average of 264 adult Indians continuously employed the year round, earning in wages $91,630.47, not including subsistence. The greatest value of the Neopit operations is as a school of industry. Its value educationally, morally and civilly cannot be measured in dollars and cents.”
Mr. Ayer found that the Government had erected a sawmill at Neopit. This mill sawed Indian timber exclusively.
Some years ago the mill’s operations were not satisfactory, there being extravagance in management. Since Mr. Nicholson was appointed, all of this has been remedied, and after liberal deductions for all expenses, the mill shows a profit of $443,176.17 to the Menominee Indians (from July, 1910 to September 30, 1913). He found the mill employed a large number of Indian men, while other Indians found employment working with the logging crews in the woods. The mill served a double purpose. Not only were the Indians employed and earned good wages, but they also received the benefits of the mill’s earnings.
There is practically no poverty on the reservation, and little sickness. The houses are clean and well kept.
Mr. Ayer’s exhaustive study of conditions led him to make several recommendations, one or two of which I append herewith:—
“I recommend that two, four or six of the brightest young Indians on the Reservation be sent to Wisconsin State College of Agriculture at Madison to take a full course in forestry and scientific farming, that they may come back to the reservation equipped to teach the Indians who have elected to make farms.
“I would also recommend that there be a company or tribal store at Neopit and a branch one at Keshena and that the goods shall be sold say on a basis of 12½ or 15 per cent, which would make the stores absolutely self-sustaining and the Indians would get the necessities of life much cheaper. These stores should also carry a stock of the ordinary agricultural tools that might be used and there should also be a bank, say with forty or fifty thousand dollars capital connected with the Neopit store, where the employees of the mill could get checks cashed.