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Show REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OP INDIAN 8OHOOL8. 375 are due to the efforts of the painstaking and efficient sisters who are devoting their lives to their work. Father Digman is a man of remark-able ability, as he has shown in his capable management of this school, which has been doing good work for a great many years. The St. Mary's Episcopal Mission School is exclusively for girls, and has about 60 pupils who are being carefully and conscientiously trained to become good housekee rs and good women. The miasion-ary work here, as at Pine Ridge, ra!s d one much good, and great credit is due these self-sacri6ciugpeople, who are devoting their lives to this service. Virginia.-Hampton Institute.-This institution had 96 Indian pupils during the past year, 45 girls and 51 boys. For the past two years no Indians have been received at Hampton except those able to paes the regular entrance examinations, thus doing away with the Indian pre-paratory class. The Hampton Institute is one of the best known rac tical educational institutions in the United States and is articuP a rly-well equipped for giving instruction in industriai, as wely as literary work. The Indian bovs who desire to learn trades. to become well-informed, efficient farmkrs, and to acquire a good general education, are here able to receive instructiori of the most finished character. The girls also have the best possible opportunities and are thoroughly ~roundrdi n those artJ which will enable thein to l~rcomeg ood hoi~ie- Lakenand neat and economical housekeepers. The perfectTy equipped mannal-training department affords especially valuable opportunities to the Indian pu ils for reparing themselves to make their own living after leaving scgool. &e extensive system of agriculture is one of the best and most ably conducted in the country. During its existence this school has taught 938 Indian children, 637 of whom are now living. The institution keeps itself informed of th? record of the returned students, and from reports received has classi-fied them as follows: Excellent, l41; ,good, 333; fair, 149;t oor, 42; bad, 8. According to this classification 474 returned stu euts are entire1 satisfactory, 50 have poor records, and 149 amount to but lit-tle elt; e r way. These are largely the sick and deficient. The first three Indians were graduated from the academic course in 1882. One of them, Thomas Alford, surveyor and allotting ageut,,came back this year to see his son graduate; another, John Downing, is a pros erous in Wisconsin. ranchman in Oklahoma; and the third, Michael Ashkney, 1s a Pa rmer PBOOREW OF INDIAN EDUCATION. In the early days attempts to educate the Indian were usually made in connection with or as a part of the efforts to eonvei+ him to Chris-tianity. The missionaries were the first educators. To assist in this work various small ap ropriations were made as far back as 1775, and even before the IievoLtion, bout the year 1692, two Indian youths were maintained at the public expense at the college of William and Mary in Virginia. One of the first treaties made with the Indians after the Revolution provided that the United States should employ one or two persons to keep in repair certain mills which were to be built for the Indians and instruct some young men of the Three Nations in the arts of the miller and sawer. After that from time to time various appropriations were mad:, but it was not until 1876 that a continuous and regular system of appropriating for the Indian school |