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Show Thanking your office for the considerate treatment of such suggestions and recommendations as, in the ~erformanceomf y duty, I have consideredit necessary to make, I am, Very respect.fdly, , - The COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. - REPORT OF SCHOOL AT GRAND JUNCTION, COLO. GRANDJU NCTIONC,O LO.A, ugust ZG, lsns. SIR: I have the honor to subnlit my eighth annual report of this school. The work in the schoolrooin during the past year has. in the main. heen most satisfactory. As I contemplate the work of the schoolrooms three years of tile eight stand out more prominently, because of being years of remarkably good work; the last is oneof three-bnt, alas, the Indian Officecomes toappreciatesomeof my good workers when they get to their best, and good boys and good girls, both among employees and pupils, are promoted and shipped. Within the past eight years three of my assistants have reached superintendents'positions, twice as many more have won promotion to higher ranks and gone to new fields, while others have won the promation_ some %.inning twice, and remained with us. It has come to have the appearance to me that there is no surer road to promotion for the faithful than through the Grand Junction school-except the faithful be the superintendent. As set forth in my recent report to your office, and for the reasons therein elah-orated, we must give early attention to another method of disposing of sewage. Year after year I have delayed, digging cesspool after cesspool, in the hope t,hat the neighbqring town on the river below us wonld seek a supply of mountain water tor olty use and thus enable us at trifling expense to build a sewer to the river. which runs in less than a mile of us. This will er,entually happen, but the delay of the past and the necessary de:q of the future will, combined, make a period so long that our present methods, if continued for such a time, would endanger health. With the conditions submitted filled, no place in the service has greater prom-ise than this. We have demonstrated repeatedly that the southern Indians can be brought here and sustain as good health as in the schools on the southern res-errations. whiie the northern Indians that have come here in good health have never had a single ailment that can be charged either to the climate or their environments. Conditions that could not be foreseen by your o5ce or mine have forced a delay in attending to the schoul pasture on the neighboring stock range, though the laot that we have been sorely "grasshoppered" has urger1 it upon us more this year than ever before. The average attendance during the year has been in excess of the number for whom an appropriation was made-a fact to which I desire to call special atten-tion. as the capacity of the school has been increased more than 50 per cent since t.he assertion was made that a school here, or rather the school here, could never he filled. When we had an attendanoe of eighty-three one of the inspectors assured us that number was wholly beoause of my good lnck in having just been transferred from the reservation. The good lnclr will contmue, and the filling of the school, when we shall have doubled its capacity, will bereadily accomplished. 0otings.-This system is growing so rapidly here that during the coming year we must make such preparations for it as have never before been contemplated. and I hope and expect this fall to get same of the Indian children into the public schools of the county, while a system to lessen the clerical work to secure reports Of '~ooters."look more olosely after their instruction while out, and lessen the time necessary to make collections of sums due must have early attention. Quite a number of the older girls oan find work in good families the year around. and thequestion of shortening the school term for the sake of the '.day work" employment that in offered in the early spring is becoming a matter for serious consideration. It is my purpose to begin the manufacture of cheese as soon as the implements of the occupation can be gotten on the grounds. From 20 to 25 gallons of mi& per day can be so used now and not rob the tables. and that amount can and will he very materially increased during the ooming year. |