Page:Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state (Vol. I).djvu/63

Rh MARGARET SOLOMON, last of the Wyandot Indians in Ohio, was first of her tribe to serve as Christian missionary in the state. Throughout the region, extending approximately from the center of the state to Lake Erie, she was known to redskins and white skins alike as “Mother Solomon” and it is doubtful if any woman of either race was ever more admired and trusted by both.

In what is now Wyandot County, this daughter was born to John Grey Eyes, stalwart and influential Wyandot chief, in 1816. When Margaret was five years old something happened which not only determined the course of her own life, but more or less the lives of all within the sphere of her later influence.

The first industrial school, similar in many fundamentals to our present industrial and household arts courses, was opened in Upper Sandusky. Margaret was the very first pupil enrolled in the school. There she learned cooking, spinning, carding flax and wool, sewing. There she learned also how to read and write the English language, something most unusual at that time for any Indian, boy or girl.

The old Wyandot Mission in which Margaret was taught the principles of Christianity and deeply imbued with religious zeal, is said still to stand in Upper Sandusky. It was built in 1821, largely through the efforts of the Rev. James B. Findley, leading Methodist missionary to the Wyandot tribe. Interspersed among the huge trees that shade the little stone building are the graves of many of the bravest of the Wyandots, many of whom were Margaret’s own converts when she determined to carry the gospel of peace on earth and goodwill to men herself to her own people.

When Margaret was 18 years old, she brought a new worker into the missionary field. This was through her marriage to Chief Solomon, whom she persuaded to educate himself for the ministry and who, indeed, was later officially ordained. The couple had eight children but all of them died in infancy. So it was well for Margaret that her empty arms could find solace in ministration to the children of her race. She did.

But early in the 1840 ’s something happened. A catastrophe befell the Wyandots. The great white father at Washington decreed that they must leave the rich hunting grounds of their ancestors. That they must go westward, beyond the mountains, perhaps beyond the great river that flowed downward through distant plains.

Here was a test indeed of the white man’s religion which his brother, the Wyandot, had accepted so trustfully. Was this treating your brother as yourself? Was this permitting the red brother to enjoy in peace his land and the fullness thereof?

It might to some extent have consoled the outraged Wyandots could they have known how constantly the quite sane, quite sensible, physically, mentally, and spiritually, precepts of Christianity have been denied in