Australian ballot system, the retiring council submitting the names of fifteen eligible to the position of councilmen, and five of these being chosen. One more feature in the system of self-government is the officers meeting, held on Wednesday nights, at which mooted points in tactics are discussed, questions asked, and interchange of opinion on all matters pertaining to military organization encouraged. RELIGIOUS. The Indians had a Lend-a-Hand Club which has taken up much missionary work, at the same time that it has remembered the returned students and sent them Christmas boxes for their schools. The Indian girls have been especially active, and the gatherings at Winona Lodge have taught many an Indian boy to behave like a gentleman. It has done much to provide profitable entertainment and keep the boys out of temptation. On Thursday evenings, in order to give more freedom, the boys and girls meet by themselves, the normal school, Indian school, and night school having separate meetings. The temperance committee has under its care the temperance work of the school In order that more might be reached, and more directness and definiteness be given to their endeavors, the Indians and colored students have held their monthly meet. ings by themselves. The White Cross Legion, organized and conducted by the students, has had the hearty support of the boys, and there has been a like organization among the girls. The Indians who come from the Episcopal agencies have attended St. John's Episcopal Church every Sunday morning, and the rector, Rev. Mr. Gravatt, has held an evening service with them during the week, and conducted the Indian Sunday-school. RETURNED STUDENTS. Every year that lengthens the test and increases the number of returned students, only confirms the fact that Indian education and civilization-even the little of it that some of them get-is a blessing to the individuals and to the people they represent. The report that they go "back to the blanket" is slowly passing into "innocuous desuetude," side by side with the hackneyed "no good Indian but a dead Indian." Records made from personal knowledge of individual cases show a steady growth in that practical common sense and earnest devotion that augurs well for the future of the race. Believing that the best way to test our work and to improve upon it is to keep a careful record of its results, as shown in the lives of those who have returned home, a teacher who has been in the Indian school since its early days has been given special time and facilities to follow the records of these students from year to year and to report upon them. Personal contact with them here, frequent visits to their homes, and a constant correspondence with and about them are the means used to this end. The constantly increasing number of returned students naturally divides itself into five classes or grades. First, are those whose work is of unusually high order, and whose influence is very broadly felt for good. They are often those who had had exceptional advantages, but, sometimes, those who, by earnestness and devotion, have pushed themselves into the fore ranks among the leaders of their people. Second, comes the large number of those who do well and are uniformly satisfactory, e. g., a young man who settles down quietly upon his farm or at his trade, wears citizens' clothes, goes regularly to church, marries legally, is industrious and temperate, i. e., a good citizen and a man whose influence is felt for good among his neighbors, or a woman with a correspondingly good record. In short, any whose influence seems really for good, come into this very important second class. The third grade, or fair, includes the sick and unfortunate, or those who by some slip have perhaps temporarily blemished their record. Many who have only a few months of schooling and from whom we can expect no better are also here. The fourth class, or poor, are those who have fallen more from force of circumstances and lack of training than from vice. Some who have been on the bad list and are to day doing well are also here; for with the old stain upon their influence it can not yet be considered good. The fifth class, or those recorded bad, are those who do wrong while knowing better. The number is smaller this year than ever before even though the general intelligence of those returned is yearly greater. This surely is encouraging. The record this year reads: Nearly all our present students affirm that they have come to Hampton through the influence of some student returned home, many of them being relatives or family friends. Only ten years ago the school had to use every influence to obtain pupils; now it has often to turn away two-thirds of those who apply for admission. Catechists and teachers have a wide and telling influence, and there is a large number of Hampton students in this work. At Lower Brulé Agency, Dak., which was one of the hardest to reach, there are 5 Hampton boys engaged as catechists under Bishop Hare. The first duty of the catechist is to live right; he must have a home and a farm which he works himself. If there is no teacher at the camp where he is located, he or his wife teaches the school. He holds a service on Sunday and one during the week, visits the sick, looks after the old and needy, and does the duties that usually fall to a pastor's lot. The pastor's wife needs to be very competent, too. She must make the home, keep the children neat, help the women in their sewing societies and prayer-meetings, teach the women to care for their children and sick people-in short, be a missionary, too. Three of the five catechists of whom I speak have Hampton-trained wives, and the other girls are from home schools. Last year 15 boys and girls were teaching schools, and the number this year is about the same. Many others are helping on the good work just as strongly as if they were professional teachers and ministers. Susan La Flesche, who graduated from the Woman's College in Philadelphia last year, is now a Government physician at the Omaha school. Before long we hope a hospital will be started there with her as its physician. She will train a corps of Indian girls for nurses, and thus start a much-needed work. Marguerite, her sister, who married well after teaching a year, is just as active as ever in all matters concerning her people; is their interpreter, letter-writer, and general adviser still. A Law and Order Society has been started among the Omahas, and in this she and other Hampton students have a part. Her work among the women in their homes, too, would fill a volume, were it all told. Josephine Barnaby, another Omaha girl, after graduating decided to become a trained nurse. An accident prevented her finishing her course, but she had learned enough to be a great help to Miss Collins, a missionary in Dakota, and a year ago she went among the Sioux, whose language she did not understand, and has since been working there with great success. Miss Collins is unlimited in her praise, and Josephine enthusiastic in her work. A former report said: "She teaches the school, holds meetings, teaches the women to cook and sew in their homes, visits the sick, and teaches the women to care for them. Besides this they have a primitive employment bureau for men and women, and, discouraging laziness and begging, seek to find employment for the deserving." Thomas Miles spent last year at his home, at the Sac and Fox Agency, in Indian Territory. He had been two years in the medical school, and wanted to be more independent of his friends, and so went out to earn money and experience. The chiefs and councilmen needed an intelligent Indian helper, and he was made secretary of the nation. In this position, where his knowledge and experience were recognized, he had a grand chance of leading the older men, the conservatives, to broader views and more progressive ways, as well as of teaching their children the same way. This year he has come back to take up his senior work, and his place in school and council is filled by Walter Battice, the friend who came with him to Hampton six years ago, then one of the wildest and most reckless of his tribe. Besides his duties at the school, in which he is much interested, Battice has found time, with the aid of other Hampton students, to organize a Sunday-school at the agency-3 of our girls responding to the call for teachers. One of these girls, Alice Moore, for two years laundress at the Sac and Fox school, deserves special mention. Her rooms and her clothes, her tubs and her boilers, were as faultlessly neat as was her person. Besides the music of the washboard, she lends her aid with organ and voice to the exercises of the school, being there and at the Sunday-school a valuable helper. During a six weeks' visit to the Indian Territory last autumn Miss Folsom staid, as far as possible, with our returned students, finding their homes not only hospitable, but comfortable and well appointed. At Thomas Alford's, where she spent the most time, she found no want that industry and intelligence could supply. The little frame house and numerous log outbuildings were all built by his own hands, and plenty of vegetables, milk, poultry, and eggs came daily from his own farm. Being for six years a teacher and for two a surveyor, much of the time away from home, farming was necessarily a secondary consideration, yet was so managed that, under the skillful hands of his excellent wife, his table yielded an appetizing abundance. Three beautiful boys, well dressed, and speaking only English, bore testimony of a wise mother hand, and kept things lively within the spacious limits of the picket fence that surrounded the house and kept the ambitious young nomads within bounds. "Making believe" read the. father's old school-books was one favorite amusement of these young Indian Ameri 13059 I A--21 cans, and she was somewhat startled one day at having the noble bird of freedom depicted upon our silver dollar and illustrated in a small arithmetic pointed out to her as a "wild goose." John Downing's home also afforded most grateful shelter and luxurious fare. This neat little stockade house, standing upon a little rise of ground and backed by a small forest of fruit trees, is an oasis of comfort and cheer after a long day on the monotonous prairie. In all that country there is not a finer farm or herd, nor a more enterprising farmer or herder. Already this young man is rich in cattle, hogs, and horses, in corn, grain, farm produce and fruit; rich also in a higher sense in wife, children and home, and in the proud consciousness that all this has come about through his own intelligence and hard work. Seated about the table the children's hands were folded and the little heads bowed in reverence as the father gratefully acknowledged the Giver of all his blessings. In this act, as in so many others, we see Hampton's training and influence in many such homes as these. It is in the home that we can best measure the work that the schools are doing for their pupils. If there the young men and women live up to their training to the full extent of an increasing ability, no one can question the success that must follow. The Indian pupil goes back to a home where poverty and ignorance of a certain kind reign supreme. He does not always find a nice bed; there are probably no nice dishes or table linen to make the plain meal attractive; there is very likely no separate room he can call his own where he may spread out his treasures and be alone. Every day is a picnic, and not an unpleasant one at first, but like every one who has acquired higher tastes, this rude living becomes monotonous, and he finds he must have things different. It's the old principle of first demand and then supply. When he finds he needs a bedstead he gets it in some way; money lacking, he makes one. I have seen many very creditable home-made beds, as well as tables, cupboards, and chairs, desks, book-cases, and cabinets. In one house I have visited nearly every article of furniture was made by the young man himself (a full-blooded Sioux), stained and varnished and embellished with brass hinges and nails so as to be really articles of beauty. The old-time Indian woman's sole recreation was making pretty things with beads, quills, and ribbons; and this training only needs to be diverted into other channels to make her house and children neat and pretty too. As representatives of Indian education these returned students not only hold their own, but exert an influence difficult to measure or foresee. Here is one instance of what this influence may be: A young girl was sent home after a year because not well enough to study or work; she had always been delicate, and had apparently gotten but little for her short sojourn of one year with us. Three years later a tall, fine-looking young man came to us, and proved himself to be one of the dead-in-earnest kind, one of our most promising men. This is his history. He had always been one of the gayest and wildest of the Indian young men, a leader in the dances and other exploits peculiar to the Indian youth. He would not go to school or church, and refused every effort made to tame his wild spirits. A little cousin came from Hampton sick. He saw a great deal of her, was pleased with her manner and learned to respect her new ways. Little by little she persuaded him to give up certain companions, then the dances. Afterwards she got him to go to church, and finally he gave up the old way and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. In her death he lost her encouragement, but seemed to have received additional inspiration; for though he had thus far refused to take up land for himself, he now left the agency and went out upon her land and broke it, spending three months of the summer there for her sake. His next step was to persuade his father to send his younger brothers and sister to school, and then came himself to Hampton. Not satisfied with that, he has written regularly to his parents and friends at home, urging them to follow him in leaving the Indian ways and to embrace Christianity, and he has now, after one year, the satisfaction of knowing that both father and mother, an uncle, and some others have listened to his plea and taken the steps he has urged upon them. All this and possibly more is due to the gentle influence of that one noble little girl whose biography would hardly fill a printed page. At present there is more demand for work at the agencies than can be supplied, and a young farmer is obliged to spend several winter months doing nothing even when he would be glad to work. There are a large number-about 100-now employed by the Government, Army, and mission societies. Between 60 and 70 were farming their own land last year and the number this year will greatly increase. Now is the time for men to claim their allotments and work their land. The opening of the Sioux Reserve and the surveying of the land will spur up the conservatives, who have been waiting to see what would "turn up," and the encouragement to industry proposed in the Sioux bill will very materially help them in the first and hardest steps. In twenty-five of these homes both husband and wife are Hampton students. We now take our Indian pupils for no definite term, though there is a general understanding that three years may be considered expiration of time. We have learned that every year spent here voluntarily is worth about two forced ones; that it is easier to guide the Indian than drive him. When a pupil, not especially earnest, realizes that he is here for a term of years, there is a natural feeling of restraint, of imprisonment, and the expiration of that term is looked forward to with the eagerness of the prisoner rather than the anxiety of the student who feels the responsibility of his own success. As each year the standard of our incoming pupils is higher, this feeling of individual responsibility becomes more necessary and is more easily controlled. After the pupil has learned the value of an education, which he ought to do in three years certainly, there is little trouble in teaching him to value the opportunity offered him. When he has learned this the question of success is in a large measure solved. Year by year this constant feeling of homesickness has been decreasing, so that now there is very little of it strong enough to warp the judgment of the pupil or interfere with his real purpose in life. With this change, however, we see no signs of an intelligent desire to remain in the east. The eyes of our students kindle at the thought of home, and they long to go west and take their rightful and liberal inheritance. Indeed, most sensible white youth in the east would be glad of such a chance. This desire to return among the Indians is never forced. It is always wholly free, and we believe it to be simply on the lines of good sense and human nature, for it is idle to undervalue the "pull" of kindred and of lifelong associations. Whatever the theory. the fact remains that these Indian pupils will and do return. For every one who is kept east a hundred return home. With this fact proven, it stands to reason that the preparation of our pupils for life should be with this end constantly in view. This year we have had but three Indians in the higher schools in the east: Thomas Miles, already referred to, who will need one more year to complete his medical course; Annie Dawson, who has recently graduated at Framingham Normal School and will go west to teach in the fall; Henry Lyman, in his first year at the New Haven Law School. Of him the dean of the faculty says: The faculty of Yale Law School have found Henry Lyman studious, thoughtful, conscientiously faithful in attendance upon the school exercises, uniformly correct in deportment, respected and self-respecting, and quite up to the average of his class in intelligence. Next year Walter Battice, now teaching at Sac and Fox, expects to return east to study something of law; John Bruyier, a Sioux, who has just graduated from here, and who for two years has had the study of medicine in view, goes to Meriden, N. H., to better prepare himself for a course of study in the Yale Medical School. Higher courses are only encouraged where there is more than ordinary hope of success, and where there is a tested willingness to work hard for it, each student being obliged to earn more or less of his own expenses. Each deserves all the help Government can give. I am, sir, with great respect, your obedient servant, The COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. S. C. ARMSTONG, Principal. |