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Show I REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OB INDIAN AFFAIRS. 21 the day school, because the Indian allotments are widely scattered and often far from the schdol, and so an Indian can not live on his distant allotment and' at the same time keep his children in the school. Another is the ration system. On one or two reservations many of 'the Indians have been dropped from the ration roll, yet on others most of them, including even the able-bodied, receive their customary dole, and naturally are not anxious for work of any kind. Still another drawback is the system of providing artificial work for the Indians on the reservations, for which they are paid by the day a certak sum in lieu of rations. Mr. Phillips reckons with the fact that even the Indians who have allotments of fairly good farming land are destitute of the faculty of initiative, are unfamiliar with the best methods of work, and as a rule lack the necessary things with which to begin it, and some means of livelihood must be provided while they are improving their land. This, he thinks, might be ac-complished by paying them for certain work of a permanent and beneficial nature done by them on their own allotments, being carefd to keep in view the fact that no such nursing process can be con-tinued indefinitely, and giving only such assistance as will make it possible for the allottee to support himself from the products of his allotment. Mr. Phillips anticipates no trouble in procuring markets presently, in the near-by cities, for anything the Indians may have to sell. A WASTEFUL SOHOOL SYSTEM. To the attentive reader of my reports for the last two years it must have been plain that their argument pointed toward a marked change in the Indian educational establishment, always in the direction of greater simplicity and a more logical fitness to the end for which it was designed. Such a change must be almost as slow in its complete accomplishment as the upbuilding of thestructure whose plans are to be modified. No one hand can bring it all about; the official term, the powers and the resources of no one commissioner are extensive enough to do more than set the machinery in motion and point out to his successors, the Congress, and the ~ubl i tch e 'reasons for his course, trnsting that such an appeal to the national wmmon sense will bear fruit in the continuation at least of the general features of his policy. I entered o5ce with a purpose, which I have kept steadily in view, to enlarge the system of day-school instruction as opposed to the increase of the boarding schools, and among the boarding schools the preference of those on the reservations to those at a distance. The subject has been so fully discussed that no elaborate rehearsal of the argument is called for here. Briefly stated, it pivots on the question whether we are to carry civilization to the Indian or carry the Indian to civilization, and the former seems to me infinitely the wiser plan. \ |