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Show REPORT OF THE OOMMI83IONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 9 ing of boys and girls, interfere with school attendance, and can only result in nullifying the good work of the teachers. An inspecting official, in a very recent report upon a Middle West tribe of Indians, says: They held two medicine dances while I was at this agency. I attended one of them; and while they claim that it is a religious ceremony I hardly think it should be encouraged. It draws & crowd together of several hundred Indians for two or three days and encourages them in idlenew. The Indian giving the dance bears all the expenses of it and gives presents besides, 80 that it frequently costs $200 or $300. On this occasion they were initiating a boy about 12 years of age, and his mother was bearing the expense. I have no doubt this ceremony at him age will have a stronger influence on him in later life than all his schooling. L i e all free people who have ranged the forests and plains, the North American Indian loves the pleasu<es of the dance and the poetry of motion, and therefore there may possibly he a few harmless Indian dances; but such, if they exist; are an exception. Indian schools, however, recognize this love of dancing; and, to turn it from vicious-ness and harmfulness, it is usually customary to have social entertain-ments on certain evenings at the school, where the boys and girls can meet together and enjoy themselves as their civilized neighbors do, by participating in a well-regulated dance. It ad& brightness to their monotonous round of duties and teaches politeness and courtesy to each other. The Indian dance, no matter if it is religious, should go with its earlier prototype, the bacchanalian dances of the ancient Greeks. It is probably trne that the majority of our wild Indians have no inherited tendencies whatever toward morality and chastity, according to an enlightened standard. Chastity and morality among them must come from education and contact with the better element of the whites. An Indian girl who returns home to her parents does not have the same restraints thrown around her as does the white girl. Superintendents, teacher@a, nd other employees in Indian schools there-fore receive scant support from the wild Indian parents at home, who can not appreciate the anxiety of white mothers to guard their offspring. It must be taken into consideration, in dealing with thisvital qnestion of Indian civilization, that it is not an easy matter in one generation to engraEt our standard of morality, evolved from centuries of Christianity, upon the children of the forest, who have for genera-tions followed the instincts of nature. The difficulty surrounding those who are employed in Indian schools is extremely great. Charged with the responsibility of forming the moral chrtracters of numbers of Indian children who do not appreciate the restraints with which our own children are familiar, and knowing ,these general conditions, the characteristics of the Indians, and the lack of home support, when oases of immorality among the pupils are |