deceit of the white race as he sees and knows it? Shall sensational journals arouse old-time feuds by scare-heads of Indian uprisings whenever the Indians resent long and patiently borne injustice and deceit, such as caused the Pillager Indians to resist arrest, or the Yaquis to resort to arms to save their cultivated lands, which the stronger race coveted? Will we never acknowledge the truth that from the end of the Civil War up to the present there never has been an Indian war or an Indian outrage that was not directly or indirectly the result of the white man's unlawful encroachment on lands ceded the Indians?

If the view taken by the average citizen of the so-called Indian problem could have the proper perspective of facts and figures, and then be looked at through the lens of impartial fair-mindedness, it would induce an optimistic belief in the ultimate transition of the present and succeeding generations of red men into selfsupporting, law-abiding citizens of the United States.

The

The time has gone by when we may consider the Indian as a savage. older of them are still hampered with traditions and remembrances of nomadic or pueblo life; but the younger have practically lost all prejudices of race or tribe, and wish to be as are their white brothers. The possibility of civilizing our Indians by education is no longer a matter of question or doubt. Indians are men; and with the same mental, industrial, and moral training that other races receive, they will take their places among us as useful citizens. Results already achieved are full of encouragement for the future. Thousands have gone out from the schools and are exerting an influence for good upon the people among whom they live. All experience, past and present, proves that anything of either honest labor or education, however lowly, which gets the Indian out from his tribe into the activities of right civilized life, is immeasurably better for him and for the Government than all that can be done for him within the domains of the tribal or reservation home.

Not many years ago any scheme of Indian education was deemed Quixotic. The class who then said most persistently,

"You can not do it," now croak, "It is of no use; they all go back to the blanket, and are worse than they were before. Those who utter such sentiments are either blind or ignorant of the true situation. Criticism is freely given on the dealings of the Government with the Indian, but the last twenty-five years have seen much improvement, especially in educational work; and as a rule, there are able and upright men in charge of Indian affairs, both at the head and throughout the service. When these give the best of their hearts and brains to the solution of awakening the "souls bound in red," are they not in themselves a revelation and an object-lesson to the Indian as to what the average honor and virtue of the white man is, in contrast with those who have pushed him farther and farther from the huntinggrounds of his fathers, and given him nothing but desert land and whisky for his portion? Would he not desire to emulate their example and profit by their presence? Records say "Yes" a hundred times over.

It is charged that the Indian is dirty, lazy, lazy, resentful, unprogressive. The indictment is true enough in each separate charge. The Indians one sees along the lines of some of the transcontinental Southern railroads are lazy, dirty, even filthy. One of their reservations has a fine irrigating stream running by, but owned by white men who would not allow an Indian to drink therefrom, if they could help it, and do not allow a drop for irrigation. Nothing grows in the Southwest without irrigation. What is the Indian to do? He is not permitted to go elsewhere. Why should he not be lazy? Another band has no water from heaven or earth, and water for domestic use is carried five miles. Why should they bathe frequently? And yet it is worthy of note that the children of the least civilized, the most repulsive of these poor people, those who live where they could not get water to bathe if they wanted to,-the Apaches, for instance, are most cleanly, tractable, industrious, and capable, as well as grateful, when taken from their squalor. Teachers of both reservation and industrial schools unite in such testimony.

A tribe is comfortably placed, has water and vineyards and homes occupied for

generations; but certain persons, aided and abetted by those in authority, who will profit thereby, covet the land and the Indians are ousted. Why should they not be resentful, vindictive? The Sioux, Arapahoes, and Assiniboines are content to lie around agency stores and drink and steal when they can. Forced into idleness, their old hunting-grounds rendered barren of buffalo and game, placed on lands either semi-arid or where they are snowed in all winter and have killing frosts till July, what incentive have they to progress? Put yourself in the Indian's place, you who think we are taxed to death to support a lot of lazy, incapable people.

By what process were we ourselves educated, civilized? The enlightened few planted their ideas and were jeered and scoffed at by ignorance. Time, however, added to their influence, their ideas spread, opposition weakened, savagery gave way. The process is as plain, the result as sure, with the Indians as with our ancestors. Educated red men are to-day a small minority, but each year adds to their numerical strength and correspondingly diminishes the opposition. Teachers experienced in teaching before entering the Indian service are universal in their testimony that the Indian pupils are no more limited in their capabilities than

Could you do better, be higher morally or mentally, if such conditions prevailed for you and yours for generations?

But the condition of the Indians on reservations is gradually, and in some cases rapidly changing for the better, largely through the influence of the young educated Indians whom the Government schools send back to their people every year. Then, of course, the reservations are more and more becoming surrounded by civilization. So, within and without, benign influences are at work, and the beginning of the end of the Indian as a problem is to be seen.

white children. The hesitancy caused by use of the strange language is no more marked than in children of foreign birth.

The United States has been a long time in finding out that education is the only salvation for the Indian. From the first attempts to educate Indian children, before the Revolution, to the present system of Indian schools is a far cry, Washington's idea of association and final absorption by the white race never having been fairly tried. Jackson's reservation plan was adopted, with subsequent removal of Indians to unknown soil and climatic conditions. Its evil of maintain

ing tribal relations and the subsequent degradation and pauperizing of a one-time free and self-respecting race has culminated in such evil results that it is one of the gravest questions confronting our Indian Bureau and educators to-day.

It is only within the present generation. that the Washingtonian idea has obtained general favor. From a small beginning twenty-one years ago, when the sum of twenty thousand dollars was appropriated for educational purposes, the work has steadily grown until nearly three hundred schools, subdivided into day, reservation, and non-reservation, boarding and industrial, are filled to overflowing with nearly twenty-five thousand children from the two hundred and fifty thousand Indian population reported by the last census. For the support of these schools Congress appropriated for the last fiscal year nearly three millions of dollars.

This outlay justifies inquiries into the results. It might not be amiss to state that since 1831, Indian wars have cost the Government over one hundred millions of dollars, to say nothing of the loss of life to both races and consequent retardation of settlement and civilization.

In eighteen years we paid out twentyeight millions of dollars for support of the Sioux, and almost as much more for the lands purchased from them, including army expenses to keep them on their reservations. They are now gradually dying out, corrupt and diseased from idleness, because they were forced to be supported instead of supporting themselves as they wished. Suppose one fourth of this vast sum had been expended in the proper education of their children and in encouraging and helping them, old and young, to emigrate into and distribute themselves throughout our communities, can there be any doubt that the Sioux would now be practically self-supporting citizens? From the financial point of view alone, it is wiser as well as cheaper to educate than to subjugate the original owners of this country. If they must be supported, the cost of such support for an educated Indian is much less than that expended by the Government to keep the wild aborigine in subjection. It costs one hundred and twenty dollars to support an uneducated Indian in South Dakota for

twelve months, and only seven dollars for an educated one. Then again, since education began among the Indians the number of military posts has decreased from seventy-one to ten,-about one seventh of the number previously required.

All who cavil against the Indian and his ultimate education should remember that whatever it be that so develops the soul as to cause an entire change in the life and expression of an individual should not be set aside as worse than useless. It is good for any one to have "The sublime spirit of discontent" aroused within when one is not utilizing his God-given powers. Taken, as the little blanketed child often is, at a tender age, given fewer years of education than are granted to most white children. then sent back to fight for its life and soul among surroundings of the most discouraging kind,—this is a surpassing test of endurance and character, rivaling the old-time tortures self-imposed by young braves. Yet Dr. Hailman tells us that "whenever on reservations there has been marked progress it is traceable largely to returned students' influence." Honor and grateful admiration are due the young heroes and heroines who go forth from the Indian schools, throwing their lives against unreasoning superstition and wresting victory from what sometimes seems utter defeat.

If the Indian had not been greatly benefited by the educational privileges already given him, would the appropriations have been increased nearly one hundred and fifty fold in twenty years? Would the Government be considering the erection and maintenance of ten more industrial schools for its wards if it did not think or know that this would be the quickest way to eliminate the vexed Indian problem and wipe out the blots on history's page of a century of dishonor?

In ignorance and weakness these children of nature stand facing new and strange conditions. To them it is all a dark mystery. Their fate is upon them. They reach out appealing hands. Forty thousand swarthy, straight-backed, eagereyed Indian children wish to be released from the bondage of the old Mosaic law,"The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children." Shall they not have a fighting chance for their lives and souls?

Truly, justice will prevail, and in spite of political talk of reduction of expenditures (and the Indian Bureau is always a ready target for such ill-judged retrenchment), the judgment of our better class of legislators will prevail; the needed money will be appropriated, and the child of the forest, the plain, and the pueblo will be assisted still more fully into the light of civilization.

We insist again that education is the great factor in the transition of the Indian. The growth of a healthy educational sentiment among these people will

ing, and industrial, seems best to meet the exigencies of the situation.

Those educated in these schools are prepared to become citizens of the United States. They will appreciate the public schools for their children, and will seek to establish and maintain them. They are brought into close and sympathetic relationship with American institutions, and find there are people who do not want to take everything away from them, giving nothing in return, but who treat them as "brothers under their skin." This is a revelation to most of the newly arrived

students in any school, and one welcome in its novelty, accepted in its spirit, and appropriated as a lesson. As the pupils go out from the reservation schools to the larger industrial ones there is a blending together of many tribes. Under the influences to which they are there subjected the representatives of the various tribes learn to respect one another, and there is a breaking down of the tribal animosities and jealousies which in the past have been productive of much harm and a fruitful source of trouble to the Indian