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Show COMMISSIONER INDIAN AFFAIRS. 6 that I might definitely know the number of Indians visiting the city, a register has been established, and since February 7, 1914, over 94 Indians have called at the o5ce. Probably a larger number of dele-gations than ever before have also visited Washington, and I have made it a practice in the case of every delegation and every indi-vidual Indian to understand reservation matters from the Indian's point of view and to give them the personal attention which is their right and their due. INDIAN EDUCATION. PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The year has been especially marked by the large increase in the number of Indian pupils enrolled in the public schools throughout the United States. There are now more Indian pupils in these schools than there are in all the Indian schools under the control of the Government. Except for the necessity of increasing school facilities for the Navajoes and Papagoes, the Indian school system is very close to the turning point as regards an increased enrollment of pupils. On the Cheyenne River Reservation the number of Indians in public schools during the last year increased 100 per cent over that of the year previous. From such reservations as Kiowa, White Earth, Omaha, and Santee, and among the Five Tribes, increases in at-tendance in the public schools are reported. Several factors have contributed to this trend of affairs. I have encouraged the entrance into the public schools of Indian children, because it affords training of the greatest value, and furnishes an excellent opportunity to begin the cooperation of the Government with the State in the education of the Indian that must surely come and which will hasten the solution of the Indian problem. State authorities are more and more coming to a full realization of the necessity of an early assumption of their obligation with reference to Indian education. They appreciate the fact that the Indian is assuming his part in local affairs, and that an intelligent citizenship is essential to the welfare of the community. Indian parents tbem-selves show a marked preference for this form of education. It permits their children to remain with them in their homes, the separation from which has been heretofore their chief objection to enrollment of their children in Government boarding schools. With his children in the public school, the advanced Indian who wishes to remain on his allotment is able to do so, and the backward Indian ~1 1 0is tempted to follow his children to the boarding school, living in ramp near by, can be encouraged to remain on his allotment. |