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Show REPORT OF THE COiUbfI88IONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRR. 3 I of this great nation. The pressure for land must diminish his reserva-tions to areas within which he can utilize the acres allotted to him, so that the balance may become homes for white farmers who require them. To educate the Indian is to prepare him for the abolishment of tribal relations, to take his land in severalty, and in the sweat of his brow and by the toil of his hands to carve out, as his white brother has ; done, a home for himself and family. Practical education is what he most requires-the knowledge of how to make a living, even under adverse circumstances. The first step is the acquirement of the English language. Without it he is powerless to transact intelligently the ordinary affairs of life, to dispose of the produce of his farm or the increase-of his herds. Indian schools are therefore limited in text-book instrnction to the ordinary common school branches. Higher mathematics, geometry, and astronomy have no place in the curriculum of schools supported by the Government for Indian children. Common sense dictates that it is unwise to turn the whilom children of the forest out upon a farm with only those rudiments of an educa-tion which, while su5cient for the average white citizen with inherited tendenciea to struggle for a living, are inadequate to enable a red child to wring an existence out of frequently ungenerous soil and under adverse conditions. The Government must therefore advance a step further-toward paternalism, if you will-and teach its Indian wards how intelligently to plant and cultivate crops and reap the harvest. W.hile doing this it must also instill a love far work, not for-work's own sake, but for the reward which it will bring. By the issuing of rations and the payment of annuities, lease money, and grass funds, theincentive to work has been removed, the Govern-ment freely giving to the red man that for which the white, the black, and the yellow must toil early and late. These latter do no work unless compelled by necessity to do so; neither will the Indian. Rations were a necessity in the past, hut that day has gone except for the old, infirm, and physically incapacitated. The absurdity of the Government spending hundreds of dollars to educate an Indiin to work, then, after teaching the necessity, sending him home to his reservation to be supported in idleness, is all too manifest. It were far better not to educate at all if education is to be nullified by unwise gratuities. Give the Indian a white man's chance. Educate him in the rudi-ments of our language. Teach him to work. Send him to his home, and tell him he must practice what he has been taught or starve. It will in a generation or more regenerate the race. It will exterminate the Indian, but develop a man. Protect him only so far that he may gain confidence in himself, and let nature and civilized conditions do the rest. Indian schools are carrying out the above policy in the face of many |