Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/109

Rh any reason why the same kind of stimulus and encouragement employed to advance industrialism among the whites, should be entirely neglected upon an Indian reservation? Agricultural societies, with their bounties and premiums; clubs for discussing methods and results, and the consequent strife to attain excellence.

The Indian schools, such as Chemawa, are in the right direction, to the extent that they are selective and manual, but likely they will prove to have a baneful influence, in that the graduates will find themselves out of rank with their kind. An Indian agency would be free from this taint, and with a wide-awake agent, well informed, and anxious to verify his aspirations for improvement, would afford the best opportunity for successful experiment, to be found on this continent. Merely allotting lands to Indians and declaring them citizens, is to turn them out to the mercy of the white wolves of civilization. That, too, has been proved.

As has been stated, there was no appropriation of money by the Government to pay for the services of a clerical assistant to the agent at the Umatilla, an evidence which should have been conclusive that he was expected to perform such service himself without additional compensation. No house had been built especially designed for an office where such work could be performed free from the interruptions of other concerns and hence the agent had to keep his accounts, construct his papers and make out his quarterly reports to the heads of the department, within the one-roomed cabin where his family resided and performed all of the operations pertaining to his household. There was a large building which served as a meeting or council house to which the agent could repair to meet any considerable number of his wards, but for ordinary consultation with the chiefs or head-men of the tribes, hearing reports from the employees or interpreter, from sheer convenience, his house was constrained to permit that innovation too. And, on the whole, I think such relations, when conducted with respect to the sacred proprieties of private life,