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Show 6 REPORT OF 'HE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, many are making comfortable homes for themselves and living upon and cultivating lands in severalty. Through the generosity of Oongress many of the arid, cheerless, and desert regions of the reservations are being converted into cultivable tracts of land by the illauguration of irrigation schemes, and upon such tracts these Indian boys and girls may find for themselves comfortable homea and a living. The advantage and necessity of taking their lands in severalty is impressed upon the pupils in the schools, to which end their training must necessarily tend. The dignity of labor and the necessity for exertion upon their part is an essential part of their edu-cation. All Government schools are industrial in that one-half of each day is devoted to those pursuits which it is expected the pupils will follow when thay return home. These years of training are not easily shaken off, and much of it under the most adverse conditions clings to the pup~lsh, aviug an unconscious erect upon the friends and relatives wit11 whom they are thrown in contact. The leaven thus introduced evidences itself in a slow but gradual elevation in those tribes strug-gling for advancement and enlightenment. THE RESERVATION IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. The reservatiou system of the United States was the necessary out-come of conditions prevailing between the whites and Iudiaus in the settlement and development of the country. The Government was forced to deal with large bands of Indians who were gradually driren back as the borders of civilization were extended, while the busy hum of iudustry began to be heard where all had been stillness under the onnership of this people. Angry and revengeful, their predatory attacks were inimical to the best interests of the settlers; therefore two alternatives presented themselves-extermination or absolute con-trol. Humanitarian principles prevailed, and the latter was accepted. Hence as a matter of military and commercial necessity the Indians were placed upon tracts of land reserved and set apart for t,heir beuefit, where they could he at all times under proper and efficient surveil-lance. Deprived in course of time of the game upon which they had formerly subsisted, the Government gave freely for their support. Such assiutance was not intended as a perpetual mortgage upon their own exertions, hut just so soon as the tribes ceased to be formidablt, it was and is the policy that they must htsgin to rely upon their own labors, being forced to understand that those who eat must also work. The reservation was not intended as a place where these savages could be rlierely disarmed, nor to surronnd them with a wall to be built each year higher and higher by their own pauperism and idleness, forever to debar them from active participation in the duties of life and citizen. ship; nor were they to be permitted to wander as vagabonds, gypsy-like, over the country, a nuisance to the people and themselves, dependent upon public charity. Fitted neither by heredity nor rduca-tion to be the arahitects of their own de~t inyth rough the medium of |
