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Show I 24 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONEB OX lNDIAN AFFAIRS, change should be made, and I am pleased to have been able, in my short term of office, to give this movement its start. For the con-tinuance of our 25 nonreservation schools there is no longer any excuse. We spend on these now nearly $2,000,000 a year, which is taken bodily out of the United States Treasury and is, in my judg-ment, for the most part a mere robbery of the taxladen Peter to pay the non-taxladen Paul and train him in false, undemocratic, and demoralizing ideas. The same money, spent for the same number of yearn on expanding and strengthening the Indians' home schools, would have accomplished a hundredfold more good, unaccompanied by any of the harmful effects upon the character of the race. But how shall we get rid of the nonreservation schools? Close them to-morrow, hang out the auctioneer's flag, and appoint a receiver to wind up their business? That is not necessary. Revolutions ac-complished in a night hy drastic methods are rarely so complete or so lasting as those for which more time and thought are taken, and which are left to work themselves out after their momentum is once established. At the last session of Congress the proposal was seriously made to abolish one or two of these supernumerary schools. I had no hand in giving it the form it took, hut I was glad to see the idea coming to the front, as a sign that our lawmakers were of their own accord beginning to consider the subject. Nothing came of the movement, beyond a brief agitation and a frank exchange of views in the committee rooms; but even this n-as significant that we had at last come within sight of a turning in the long lane of well-meant folly. I sincerely hope that this little stir mill be renewed in the next Congress and will spread. The nonreservation schools can be, and ought to be, dropped off one by one or two by two, so as to produce the least practicable disturbance of conditions, but the he-ginning of their gradual dissolution ought to be no longer deferred. If not summarily closed and dismantled, like an abandoned army post, how are they to be disposed of? First of all, the '' Indian " element in their composition should be wiped out completely. Where else does the United States Govern-ment maintain special race lines in education? Does it support free boarding schools for negroes, or for Filipinos, or for the Mexicans wh&ame in under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, or for any other group of stranger people whom it has taken, wholly or in part, under its protection? If not, then why for Indians? In local schemes of popular education, it has pleased certain communities to separate the races according to what seems the best interests of the social vicinage; but for the Government of the United States to do so is quite another proposition. Everywhere I am striving to erase those lines |
