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Show 8 REPORT OF THE COMMISBIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. Gen. Frank C. Armstrong also, in a report last year deduced from his long service as an outsider, as an inspecting official, and as an Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs, says: I find on all reservations that I 2uwe visited that the schools are very much improved within the laat six or eight yam, or since the time that I visited them aa an inspector. Theattendance iamuch better, theclaasof employeedmbeen improved, the discipline and system advanced in every respect. I consider the whole Indian service, md more particularly the school service, greatly improved in every respect within the past ten years. At various times during the past year thGe have been sensational newspaper articles bearing upon the question of morality at Indian sehools. It is trne that cases of the intercourse of the two sexes in some of the Indian schools, owing to lack of proper supervision, have happened i n a few instances, but in every case where, from a careful investigation of the testimony and the evidence, it has been found to be due to culpable negligence of those charged with the care of the pupils, the negligent ones have been remuved from the service. The conditions which surround an Indian school are very materially different from those of the ordinary white school, and the same stand-ard can not always be adopted in dealing with these classes. Children in white institutions of learning usually come from homes where every moral influence is thrown around them, where their own inherited ten-dencies are fostered for the upbuilding of a moral character. They are encouraged by parents, msociates, and friends to be chaste and moral, and are thus by nature and environment, as well as inheritance, stronger to resist the temptations of this character than are Indian children. Pupils in Indian sohools are generally kept in these institutions for twenty-four hours of the day for ten months in the year. The other two months they are returned to their homes in the camp. where they live surrounded by their own people. The "sun dance" and other religious dances of a number of tribes have n very deleterious effect upon the young generation of Indian boys and girls, and while many of the brutal and bloody features of these dances have been eliminated within the past ten years, the char-acter of some, from recent sworn reports of eyewitnesses, are obscene and degrading to such a degree a3 to make a description too revolting to print. If it were possible to restrict such "dances" to the old Indians the practice would soon die out, as the training of the younger generation in the schoo1s will prevent their participating therein; but such restriction can not be made, as, in the caaes in mind, every child, no matter of how tender an age; every girl, no matter that every womanly instinct is revolting against the custom, must under heavy penalties be present, and not only be present, but actually participate therein. These dances of alleged religious enthusiasm disturb the moral train- |