GOVERNMENT INDIAN SCHOOLS.
By A. P. Dean
The recent appropriation bill for the Indian service designates $2,056,695, or nearly one quarter of the whole sum, for the support of schools. The origin of these schools dates back variously, according to locality. Those among the Sioux are due to the ratification of the school treaty in 1868. There are several kinds of schools—day schools, boarding schools, reservation and non-reservation schools, bonded industrial schools, and contract schools. At the day schools the pupils attend only between certain hours, generally from nine to four. Absentees are brought in by Indian policemen, and while at the school pupils learn something of household and industrial duties. Day schools at a distance from the agency (which is the headquarters for rations, supplies, mail, news, salaries, and white society), are called camp schools, because the Indians around them live in log huts with tepees (this Indian word meaning properly a circular tent), and move all their belongings whenever they wish to go any distance away. These camp schools are usually supplied with a principal teacher and an assistant teacher. The management of the school-room is the work of the former, while the latter—who is often his wife—attends to the personal neatness of the pupils. On reaching the schoolhouse, girls are required to wash their faces, comb their hair, and put on clean aprons, which they themselves make at the schoolhouse, under the direction of the assistant teacher. Facilities for washing and ironing these aprons are also provided. There is also, in many cases, a small garden cared for by the boys; and a simple luncheon prepared by the girls, under the direction of the assistant teacher, is furnished daily to all the pupils. A camp school has one large building, including a schoolroom and a house for the teacher. The Indians get into the way of expecting a good many favors from the camp teachers, and every tyro grants some—until he finds his leisure and his larder seriously depleted thereby, and sees the barb-wire fence around his house surrounded by a crowd of clamorous squaws, who, having used up their agency rations, or, more likely, allowed them to spoil through lack of proper care, are anxious to provide for the hungry pappooses in the tepee. There are in all 102 government day schools, more than half of them being among the Sioux in the northwest. Contract schools are religious schools under contract with the government for the education of Indian pupils, and receiving a portion of all their support in return for this service. At present there are about 50 such schools. It must, however, be remembered that the day schools are much smaller than the other kinds, so that, altho twice as numerous as the contract schools, they represent an enrollment little more than one-half as large. The training schools have special facilities for teaching various trades and household management. There are 20 now in operation, with an average attendance of almost four-fifths of their total capacity. To carry on such schools requires, on an average, about one employee for every 7 or 8 pupils, as the success of the work depends largely upon individual instruction. Indeed, the experience of those working in such schools goes to prove that if a still larger number of employees could be afforded, results would be more highly satisfactory. The largest of these industrial schools is the well-known one at Carlisle, Pa., where the “outing” system, which sends pupils out as temporary help in families near by, is practised with helpful results. All the non-reservation industrial schools are bonded. The name “bonded school” means one whose superintendent has given bonds for the honorable use of all moneys intrusted to his care. At all non-reservation boarding schools the superintendent is allowed a certain sum per capita, at present $167 a year for most schools, from which money all current expenses of the school must be met. This occasionally embarrasses the bonded superintendent, as in any case of sudden diminution in the number of pupils some outlay or other must be cut down, or the excess of expense over income is liable to be deducted from the face value of his bond. But the superintendent of a non-reservation school has an advantage in being accountable only to the Indian Commissioner, while on the reservation everything must be done under the authority of the agent. The reservation boarding schools are the most numerous class, there being a total of 7,558 in operation at the present time. This form of school has an advantage over any of the others, in that it keeps the pupils somewhat in touch with home life, while yet the home is far enough removed to minimize the hindering and retarding effect of its influence. Many of the pupils can go home on Friday night and return Monday morning. This makes the parents more willing to allow their children to go away to school, thereby overcoming one great obstacle to Indian education. But those pupils who can be got farther away from the camp life are the ones who will become the most civilized in the end.—A. P. Dean.