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Show OOabMI88IONEB OF INDIAN AFF~ES. 13 for the preservation, through the schools, of what is best in Indian music. This is a subject which has never been su5ciently studied in the United States. Eminent musicians in all parts of the world express astonishment that our people should have left so noble a field almost unexplored, particularly in view of the beautiful themes derivable from certain native songs and dances which are rapidly passing.into oblivion through the deaths of the old members of the tribes and the mistaken zeal of certain teachers to 'smother every-thing distinctively aboriginal in the young. As a matter of fact, the last thing that ought to be done with the youth of any people whom we are trying to indoctrinate with notions of self-respect is to teach them to be ashamed of their ancestry. As we Caucasians take not only pleasure but pride in reviving the musical forms in which our fathers clothed their emotions in religion, war, love, industry, conviviality, why should the Indian be discour-aged from doing the same thing? Our German-born fellow-citizen makes no less patriotic an American because he clings affectionately to the songs of his fatherland; why should the Indian, who was here with his music before the white conqueror set foot upon the soil8 The Indian schools offer us just now our best opportunity to retrieve past errors, as far as they can be retrieved, on account of the variety of tribal elements assembled there. The children should be instructed in the music of their own ram, side by side with ours. To this pur-pose an experimental start has been made, under intelligent expert direction, by the creation of the position of supervisor of native music, to which Mr. Harold A. Loring of Maine has been appointed. Although he has been at work only a few months, signs are already visible that the idea is spreading favorably among the teachers; and its popularity outside of the service is attested by the enthusiastic reception given by mixed audiences to the performance of pnuine Indian music by a well-drilled school band, as a change from the con-ventional airs it has been in the habit of playing. DEMAND FOR A aEFORM SOHOOL. The best provision which it has been possible to make for the care and instruction of children of normal disposition has left still mlsup-plied the needs of the class whom ordinary teachers find unmanage-able. To group together the well-meaning and the vicious is not a wise practice if it can be avoided, because the tendency of such asso-ciation is rather to lower than to raise the average moral level of a school. And yet the Government owes a duty even to the children of perverted instincts. There is hardly a large school in the service which does not contain its modicum of an element that requires the discipline of correction as much as of guidance. It would be an |
