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Show REPORT OF TEE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 23 was convicted on his own confession and given a life sentence in the penitentiary. The otbers were acquitted, though Guavis, who is con-aidered by the agent to be the principal criminal in the murder of Nrs. Platt, was convicted of another crime against the county and sent to the penitentiary for twenty years. FIELD MATRONS. An increasing interest in the work of field matrons is noticeable b ~ t hw ithin and withoxt the Indian service. From agencies where their work has been tested requests come for an addition to the num. ber of matrons allowed, in order that one may be assigned to each large settlement or colony of Indians, and make her home a radiating center of enlightenment and refinement. Agencies which have not been favored with such an employee upon their rolls beg that the Indian women of the tribes under their charge shall not miss the help .which afield matron can render in their groping attempts to acquire the arts of complicated civilized housekeeping. It is hard to realize the magnitude of the task which confronts the Indian woman or the i~~adcquacoyf her preparation and appliances when she steps out of her tepee, which she knev how to make, and to make wel1,into her cabin,wbich is made for her, and very likely ill-made. Perhaps it has a leaking roof, or an earth floor, or scant light, and of course it has no ventilation. With the change of domicile ia implied a, new way of eating, sleeping, and dressing, new occupations, even new hygiene. These in turn call for implements for which neither use nor place would have been found in the former abode. In fact, much that was admirably suited to an out-of-door, roving life must be dis-carded in a fixed habitation, and to substitute the right thing one must have ideals and resources and experience, which the Indian woman can not be expected to possess. As an Indian she mayhave had a comfortable tepee home, amply sup-plied with all that the family desired; as an allottee she has a bare, cheerless place, which she must transform into an attractive, well-kept, civilized home; and even the simplest of such homes must have appointment8 and conveniences manifold as compared with those required in an Indian lodge. What to do and what to do with, how to do it and how to get it, are the serious questions which the average Indian woman,unaided, can not be expected to answer satisfactorily, and the only Government employee provided to aid her to solve her special problems is the field matron. These problems, however, are not confined to housekeeping and physical needs. Her influence on and plans for her children are to be such as to direct them toward paths of life which she has not known, and her o m status and relations in tribe and homeare to be ~ilaterially modified and in many respects reversed. She will lose as well as gain |