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Show I REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 19 winter. Contrwts have been let for a good new school plast at Eed Moon Issue Station, Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency. Fort Sill school has received dditional buildings, increasir~git s capacity to 125. A new school building for the Mescalero Apaohes brings that school up to the standard of efficiency. Contracts are being prepared for a nee and adequate steam-heating plant for the school at Geuoa, Nebr. An excellent system of sewerage has been provided for Salem, Oreg. New laundries at Mount Pleasmt and other places supply great deficiencies. Repairs and changes of more or less extensive character have been made at a majority of the schools. The most elaborate work of the coming school year will consist of new industrial and boarding schools for the Piue Kidge and Rosebud agencies. These mill be modern, up-to-date school plants, with all the appropriate appIiances. They will each have accommodations for 200 pupils, and are expected to be ready for occupancy next spring. For the new buildings modern systems of lighting, ventilation, heating, aud sewerage have bee.n adopted. High ideals worthy of imitation have been placed before the Indian, ideals khich are strong incen-tives for him to reach out and grasp our white civilization, especially its he sees the obvious contrasts so strongly drawn.. Elsewhere great attelltion has beeu given economical systems of heating, lighting, and sewerage, but with economy subordinated to efficiency. On the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita reservations are a barge number of children unprovided with proper school accommodations, and through their agent, Capt.. P. D. Bddwin, they have practically evidenced their interest iu education by appropriating $25,000 of their own money for this year to supplement an amount, as large or larger, from the Government for the erectiou of a modern industrial boarding school building to care for two or three hundred children. The site for this plant has beeu selected and plans are now being yrepared so that the work may begin at an early date. Owing to the dilapidated con-dition of the Washita school buildings and their bad location, that school has beeu abandoned, and other schools on these reservations should be enlarged to meet the nece.ssit,ies of the children. Recognizing the great need for better educational facilities for the Chippewas at White Earth, especially since the burning of their school building, plans for a new building at that point have been prepared, but owing to want of funds nothiug can now be done toward its erection. A number of new day school buildings on the La Pointe, Standing Rock, and other reservations have been constructed. In place of boarding schools at Neah Bay, Chehalis. Skokomish, and Quinaielt, which from official reports appeared to be unnecessary, day schools for the current fiscal year have beeu substituted, which I think will, without decreasing the efficiency of the service, materially reduce expenses at all of said places. Arraugements are now being made for the erectiou of several day schools with semiboarding facilities for the Navajo I~dianu, which will for the present meet their requirements. |
