| OCR Text |
Show XX REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. lieve that it would be much better for Oongrcss to add this sum to the sum allowed for general education there, and to place the entireeducational sptem of Alaska under the management of the Bureau of Education, which has its own officials on the ground, and is now better equipped than the Indian Office will ever be for the prosecution of such work. THE XNGLISH LANGUAGE IN INIAN SCHOOLS. In the report of this office for 1885 incidental allusion was made to the importance of teaching Indians the English language, thepara-graph being as follows : A wider and better knowledge of the English Isusage among themis essential to their comprehension of the duties and obligationa.af oitisenship. At this time but few of t,hs adult popolation can speak a word of English, but with the efforts now being- made by the Government and by religious and philanthropic associations and ~ .. indrviduala- rlpecially in t l~uE astern Stares, with the ~oir*iollurga ud tho ~rhool. mnnrnr industriously in the Buld everyr;l~uma llloo; r l ~ ufr ibea, it isto be hoped, and i r is eooti#iznrly brltevad, that among the nnxt Ca!~nmtion of Tnd~ane the Eoclish Ian. gnaw will be sufticiently spoken and nsed to eiable them to beoome aoquruintet with the laws, cuatoms, and institutions of our country. The idea was not a new one. As far back as 1868 the commission known as tbe L' Peace Comrnis~ion,c~o mposed of Generals Sherman, I-farney, Sanboru, and Terry, and Bfessrs. Taylor (then Commissioner of Indian Affairs), Henderson, Tappan, and Augur, embodied iu the report of their iuvestigations into the condition of Indian tribes their matured and pronounced views on this subject, from which I make the . following extracts : The white sodIndian must mingle together and jointly docupy the country, or one of them must a h d o n ' i t . , * ' ' What prevented their living together $ ' * Third. The difference in language, which in a g~eat measure brsrred intercoorae and a proper understanding eaoh ofthe other'a motives and intentions. Now, by educating the obild~eno f these tribes in the English laugnegge these differinoes would have disappeared, and civilization would have followed at once. Nothing then would have been left hut the antipathy of race, and that, too, is dways softened in the beams of a higher eivilieation. ' " Throogh sameness of language is p&duoed sameneBs of sentiment, and thought; castoms and habits sra moulded md assimilated in the same way, and tho8 in process of time the differences produoing truuhlevould have been gradnally obliterated. By civilizing one tribe othem would have followed. Indians of ditie'erent tribes associate with eaoh other on terms of equality; they have not the Bible, but their religion, whioh we call superstition, teaches then that the Great Spirit made us all. In the aifference of langnaga, to-dat lies two-thirds of our trouble. " * Schools shonld be established, whioh children should be required to attend; their barbarous dialect should he blotted out and the English language sobstituted. * The object of greatest soliei-tude should be to breakdown the prejudices of tribe among &e Indians; to blot ant the boundary lines which divide them into distinct nation% and fuse them into one homogeneous maas. Uniformity of language will do this-;nothing elae will. In the regulations of the Indian Bureau issued by the Indian Offioe in 1580, for the guidance of Indian agents, ocours this paragraph : All instruction must be in En.~. l i sh. .o noeut in so far es the native lan-rn s-eo of the pupils shall be a neoessary medium for conveying the knowledge of English, and the conversation of and oommunicationa between the pupils and with the teacher must be, m far as praoticable, in English. |
