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Show EEPOkT OP THE UOIdMI881ONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 95 With conditions as they are, and which probably will remain for many yearn, the strength and foundation of Indian education must be the reservation boarding schools. They are located at the home of the parent, where he can from time to time see his child; while the 1 child, on the ather hand, during the evolutionary process it is under- ! going, does not get out of touch with ita home and people. For a I generation or more the adult Indians are fixed to their present homes, : and therefore the school is a nucleus for the best elements, while its ) employees are brought in contact with and still hold an influence over ' the boy and girl who have left its walls. The Government officials become more and more friends and advisers to their grown-up pupils. Thus the influence of the school expands in widening circles. The child thus educated does not get out of touch with its future environ-ment, and while its talents may not have been as completely unfolded as at a uonreservation school, it is probably better fitted for associa-tion with those with whom it must make its home. From the extracts heretofore made, it will be readily observed that the nonreservation school has largely outgrown the original ideas upon which it was founded. It was not contempleted, except in rare cases, that pupils should be carried to these distant schools until they had been prepared in the reservation schools. In 1886, only a few years after the first schools, of this class were established, the then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in a circular letter, outlined the proper policy, as follows: After pupils have completed t h ~cou rse at the reservation schools a limited number of those who have the best record in scholarship and deportment may, as a reward fm pmficiency and good conduct, be ~ e ntto these schools after the neeeasary permission has been obtained. Yo" will, hpwever, assist the representatives of training schools having authority from this ofice to secure children who are not provided with educational fwilities, giving preference to orphans and neglected children, being careful that only those who are physically strong and hmlthy are selected. Under his successors, however, for various reasons, uonreservation schools multiplied until the grave question' presented itself of filling them to the limit of their' capacity. Occasionally young children were taken with the consent of their parents to far-distant schools, kept until they were 21, and then returned to their homes with all knowledge of their language obliterated and not even knowing the names of their parents. They returned to the homes of their fathers, mothers, and kindred au strangers in a strange land. At times the scramble for pupils among nonreservation schools has become so undig-nified as to call for drastic measures from this ofice. This effort to 6ll their schools has caused superintendents to accept pupils of doubtful Indian lineage. It has brought into them many of the so-called "white Indians." Statistics collected early in the year show that whileout of 16,890 pupils enrolled in the reservation schools |