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Show REPOET OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 91 The financial management of the boarding schools is most deplor-able. '6 For a boarding school of 100 pupils, it has bee11 customary for the Indian authorities to annually appropriate $10,000 for board, clothing, medical attendance, and books. 0ne.fourth of this amount is paid in warrants to such superintendent in advance at the begin-niug of the quarter. The superintendent has been allowed to dis-pense these warrants as he pleased, often discounting them for cash or trading them to merchants for provisions." Such procedure upou the part of the manager of a boarding school or orphan asylum engenders carelessness in expenditures and frequently causes a deficit. If the hardship would fall alone on the superintendent it might be overlooked, but in many instances teachers have to wait a year or more for their salaries, or heavily discount the warrants issued to them. Merchants who furnish supplies for the maintenance of the school are also com-pelled to discount their warrants or wait long terms for payment. Taken in connection with their own family circle of employees and the general conduct of the school, it seems that the snperintendents are only interested imthe school to the extent of the amount of money they may be able to make out of the institution. Such financial mis-managemeut hurts the morals of the pupils and doesnot tend to elevate the character of the Indians. The ignoranoe of the superintendents ill matters of scholastic train-ing and technical knowledge necessarily establishes a low standard in the matter of instruction. The course of instruction can in no sense of the word be compared to the excellent one used in the regular Gov-ernment Indiau schools throughout the country, and yet the idea has prevailed that the Five Civilized Tribes were competent to formulate and carry out a good system of education. The necessity for learning the English language--the language which these children must nse in them ordinary dealings with the whites-does not appear to be consid-ered in the curriculum. Superintendents or teachers do not appreciate the importance of teaching it to the children, and rather seem to dis-courage its use by wnversiog with them in their own dialect. The majority of the teachers are natives of the Territory, and some are white. Very few have ever had any normal training, although many of them have expressed to the Superintendent of Schools a desire to better prepare and fit themselves for the positions which they hold, attributiug their want of preparation to the lack of encouragement and iutelligent superyision upou the part of their superior officers. Under the system under discussion, a conscientious teacher has very little true ambition to better the eonditiou of the pupils, as his position is dependent upon the whims and caprices of incompetent officials. Indian Territory is essentially an agricultural and stock.raising com-munity. By one or the other of thesepursuits must the great majority of the people earn their livelihood in the future. Yet industrial train-ing of any character, especially that tending toward the puxsuits they |