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Show 22 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. recently in a newspaper interview, which I shall therefore take the liberty of quoting: At the basis of whatever novelty there may be in some of the plans I have projected, lies the mtioa of following the line of least resistance. If the Indian has been living in a certain way for untold centuries, I shouid not push him too rapidly into a new social order and a new method of doing things; I shouid prefer to let him grow into them of his own accord. For one thing, the chiidren of the Indians are little wild creatures, accus-tomed to life in the open air, familiar with the voices of nature rather than the voices of men, and I have felt that to imprison them in closed houses and compel them to do their school work in the ordinary routine way is a hardship which there is no need of enforcing arbitrarily: Of course, it is impracticable in some parts of the country to dep;lrt very far from the common method of llo,using our schools ; the climate would forbid it, for example, in places where the winters were very long and severe. But in a large part of the Southwest there has never seemed to me any good reason why children should be confined in a closed house during the season of fair weather, and I therefore hit upon the plan of having a few .experimental houses built for our day schools, in which there will he the ordinary frame of studding and joists but the wlid wood-work will come up only about as high as a wainscot or chair rail in an ordinary living room. The siding above that will be made of wire screen, and the roof will have a somewhat wide overhang. The plan contemplates also flaps, pre-sumptively of sailcloth or tent canvas, so arranged that when the weather is fair and only the ordinary breezes are blowing, these flaps can he raised and lave the screen the only barrier between the schoolroom and the outside world. In the brief passages. of inclement weather which comes sometinles during the dry season in the Southwest, the flaps can be lowered as a protection against the sand storm, or rain dash, or whatever form the disturbance may take, on those sides from which it comes, leaving the other sides open to the air as before. This plan is perfectly practicable, and will appeal to the mind pf anyone fauiliar with the climate in parts of Arizona and New Mexico and southern California. I can not help thinking that the greater sense of freedom which the children wiil have in being thus simply corralled instead of imprisoned will have a good eeect even in the matter of discipline. I dare say wme teachers wiil object that the new style of schoolroom permits the children's minds to become distracted by the occnrrence of things outside. Asa matter of fact, there is very little occurring outside which would tend to distract their minds. They will hear a flutter among the aspens, if any are near at hand, and possi-bly an Indinn may ride by now and then, but the schools are nsually so isolated and the country is so sparsely supplied even with vegetation, to say nothing of human beings, that the chances are very snlali of any distraction likely to absorb the attention of the pupils. hloreover, unless you absolutely shut and bar and curtain the windows of an ordinary schoolhouse, any incident outside catches the attention of the children, with conseyuencea tantalizing rather than satis-fying; whereas if the same children were kept in a mere open-air inclosure, they would be likely to get used to the ordinary sights and sounds of their en-vironment, and pay much less attention to them to the damage of their studies. At least, that is the wny I look at it. If I am Wrong, I am ready to be con-vhced and go bacic to the old ymctice. But there is still another reason' why I like the open-air schoolhouse better than the closed one. Our Indian children are particularly prone to pulmonary complaints.. Ever since we havebegun clothing the Indians and thereby making them physically more tender, the lungs have been their great seat of troub!e; and when one child has begun to show pretty plainly symptoms of tuberculosis, |