Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/648

628 first to the present time, run in a series of two parallel lines, — the one of professed, intended, earnest, and costly efforts for the benefit of the natives; the other, of outrages, aggressions, wrongs, and miseries inflicted upon them. I have frankly admitted the melancholy and humiliating fact that violent, oppressive, and inhuman measures and deeds have to a very large extent thwarted and nullified these kindlier purposes, so that they have been triumphed over. But, so far as absolute truth will allow, I have sought to relieve the reproach upon us of the wantonness of intent and purpose in wrong-doing, by referring some of the wrong to the infelicity and malignity of circumstances.

It is grateful, therefore, in closing, to recognize as the last device of ingenuity in the intention of justice and friendliness to the Indian tribes, another experiment recently put on trial, with the prompting of private benevolence and the efficient aid of the Government. The schools established at Hampton and Carlisle for the education in the rudiments of knowledge and of the industrial arts of Indian youth of both sexes have already, in the practical excellence of their plan and methods, and in the gratifying success of their work, engaged the hearty sympathy of a widely extended constituency. The leading aim in those institutions is to arrest the processes by which the pupils, withdrawn from all the habits and surroundings of their own people and subjected to those of the whites, might be in danger of becoming unfitted or indisposed to go back to their homes, and to give them only such a term of residence, and only such helps in education and training, as will best qualify them to stir and assist others of their race in an advance to civilization. This method had, previous to the institution of these two schools, won the approval of the wisest and most successful class of teachers resident among the Indians. Scarce any success attended their labors while the Indian children were merely day-pupils in their schools and returned to their own lodges at