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Show 376 REPOKT OF SUPERISTESDENT OF INDIAN SCHOOLS. ,embellishments lacking. In oases within my personal knowledge hoys who have escaped were captured aud oarried back st the point of ra six-shooter, not by an offiaer, not by a writ, but by the salaried tesehera of a parental government, and restored to the prison; their brief taste of freedom was nwarrlerl by a ball andohein. A local writer in an Albuquerque paper cl~arged that boys,,when captured, bave been " tied by a halter around the neck to the tall of a wagon, compelled to walk back more that tell miles to the school, and were the11 seute~~ce'd& tot wo months of imprisonment;" tkat one captive "\vas trotted over the plains in the same way," mas "staked ont ill chains all night," was "put into the d~lugeoi~nl handcuffs, and a rope tied to a liuk n n i t i ~ ~tlglr m mas thrown over a beam and his body dragged up until ollly his toes rested upon the floor;" and that boys have bee11 "whipped u11ti1t he raw, quivering flesh flies open at every cut of the bloody lash." Such mas the terrible indictment. drawn up. At first I was unwill-ing to believe that the grand jury of the America,i~p eople would listen to such charges, and was disposed to let the matter pass as absurd and self-contmdictory; but under the powerful bias of political and relig-ious nartisanshir) lnen son~etin~esst rane-e l"v -g, ive credit to the most absr~pd scandal< especially mhen adroitly put by a fmile pen~or an i nsinuat~nga ddress. For more tl~au two weeks I was in Albuoueraue. N. Mex.. seelcina evideuce pro and con, closoly searching ev&y phssible and hrobab6 source of iufonuation. A volume of afidavits accumnlated, and all the evidence te~ided remarkablv in one directior!. Indeed. no testimonv h i c l 0 1 I ~ I I U I I I I S : I I I l i s ~ e l i r ~t l lo . I I I U ! . ~ causeless ;III(I l~:~seleslisb t:l 11l11~11 i111y i ~ ~ s t i t u itiui ~d ~i t)o l l i (~i~I1 s h n ~ cuv vel rile! i l l I I I Y Ill+. Tl~i.;s t n t e r ~ ~ic.r ~I~I It : I III~I I~~ C ~ * ~ : I I I ~ I I I P ~ Y . There was not a particle of evidence that the superintendeut or school official treated pupils cruelly. The solelnu asseveratiolls of the accasers. that thev nossessed amnle proof to sustain their infamous calumnies,' were onfyspecious, empty bubbles, desperate attempts to beguile illnoce~rpt eople, and to give cnr-rency and an air of plausibility to astounding stories. That LLslicvier ol~s,"L 'slavow hips," etc., are "oyenly supplied to the Government Indian schools" is an uninitigatecl falsehood. I do not know of auy school that owns a yair of l~andcuf?~I. challenge anyone to find any implemeut of torture "supplied" to the G o v e r ~ ~ ~Iundei~an~ t scl~oolsb y the. Government or auyone else. The accuser said that to his personal kno~vletlger onaway boys have been "captared and carried back to the sci~ooal t the pomt of a six-shooter." There may llare been cases of severeintimidation that I have been unable to tind, but the question has been tested closely, and I could not find a runaway boy smong the pupilsor e,x-pupils who would say that any officer of the school ever pointed a pistol at him, either at the scbool or amay from there. Nor was I able to find any pupil or ex-pnpil, or auy present or past employ6 of the school, or any citieen who had ever heard, except tl~ronght he nemspaper, of any runaway boy, or boys, "captured and carried back at the poiut of a six-shooter." The I' ball aud chain" figured largely in the stories, but nothing of the kind has been know11 in that school for four years. There is abso-lutely no hall, but a sledge hammer has sometimes beer1 used as s weight; ;~ndth ere is no chain, except a "trace" chain. No evidence was I able to find of any runawa,y boys being brought back t.) sol~ool" tied by a rope arouud his neck to the tail of a, vagou," nor of a boy "stakecl out orer uight by a chain." All agree that. the |