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Show , . BEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 21 intermediate group, say 13 and 14 years of age,'are at a stage in life when their strength is most liable to be overtaxed, and when mind, body and moral nature are most in danger of receiving an incurable warp; I should therefore take especial care to surround them with a normal and wholesome environment, encouraging tliem to work on the home gardens in the spring and in the neighboring'orchards-if there are any-in the fall, and take such time as was left to do their school work. This is the general arrangement which prevails in rural communities df white persons of modest means, not in pursuance of any preconcocted schedule or for the sake of testing any particular theory, but because nature and social circumstances combine to make it the only thoroughly practical plan. Why should not an Indian community, which has already conformed itself in part to our com-mon social order and is moving steadily.in the direction of general conformity, try the same thing? I am duly aware that this mill be regarded m some quarters as revolutionary doctrine. It will be loudly condemned by all believers in " institutional " methods, the sort of persons who would like to see the whole world move in gangs instead of on individual initiative, and eat, drink, sleep, do business and make merry in response to cer-tain k n a l taps on a bell. It will be a target for criticism, also, on pconomical grounds, for it always costs a little more in trouble, if not in money, to carry out a scheme which pays some attention to personal or class differences; but I believe that every true patriot will agree that the Government in shaping its work in any domain ought to con-sider rather the needs of a situation than the amount of bother in-volved in this or that process. In the day-school field I am introducing sevrral ideas which seeml. to me improvements. The first is a simpler and less expensive equip-ment. If I can put up for $1,000 a building abundantly good, I can see no reason for spending $3,000 or $4,000 on its construction. I bear in mind continually the fact that the schools we are building now are not for monumental purposes, or even for permanent use in the narrower sense. In a few years at the utmost they will be no longer needed exclusively for Indians, and, when the proper time arrives, it is my hope that the Government will be able to turn them over to the counties in which they are respectively situated, for em-ployment thereafter as a part of the local common school system. Not with a view to cheapening construction, but for reasons which will be obvious with a moment's thought, I am building in some parts of the Southwest, where the climate through the entire year will per-mit, a style of schoolhouse which some of the irreverent have styled my bird cage." I am by no means sure that this nickname is not truly significant of the character and aim of the architecture em-ployed. Perhaps I can put the matter in no better form than I did |
