Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1873.djvu/60

740 for them the supply must be frequently repeated. The habits also of Wigwam life are entirely irregular. The Indian has no regular habits or hours. He eats and sleeps when and where he will or can, and no school attendance, which depends upon regular home habits of the parents or children, can be relied upon. It is also well nigh impossible to teach Indian children the English language when they spend twenty hours out of the twenty-four in the wigwam, using only their native tongue. The hoarding school, on the contrary, takes the youth under constant care, has him always at hand, and surrounds him by an English-speaking community, and above all, gives him instruction in the first lessons of civilization, which can be found only in a well-ordered home.

Any plan for civilization which does not provide for training the young, even though at a largely increased expenditure, is shortsighted and expensive. large expenditure for a few years in the proper direction will be more economical than a smaller expenditure perpetuated; and it is believed that at least one-half of the Indian children, now growing up in barbarism, could be put during the coming year in such processes of education in home schools, if the means were at hand for supporting such schools. Four or live years of this appliance of civilization cures one-half of the barbarism of the Indian tribe permanently. For these children thus trained, though many of them might lapse into nomadic ways, would never go back so far as to be dangerous-or troublesome to the citizens of the Government, and within that length of time it is reasonable to be expected that the other tribes, whose children could not at first be obtained for such schools, will be brought within the reach of the Government, and thus be ready to receive their turn at this training process. I most earnestly recommend that this appropriation for education he made on a scale commensurate with the urgent necessities of the case.

The arrangement by which, in accordance with the direction of the President, all agents are appointed on the nomination of some religious body is working with increasing satisfaction. In proportion as these religions societies gain assurance that this plan of co-operation with the Government is likely to be permanent, they are generally entering heartily into operations that contemplate earnest educational and religious work in the respective agencies allotted them. They are also learn ing from experience what are the essential qualifications of an Indian agent, and also the serious nature of the responsibility to the Government which they assume in these nominations. The result is a greater care in the selection of men, and increased watchfulness over their official actions. Out of the sixty-five agents thus nominated there have been several failures during the year from want of adaptation to the service, or from want of integrity. lint in nearly every case the religions society represented by these men has been the first to make the discovery of unfitness, and to ask for a change of agents.

There is a serious complaint on the art of these religious bodies that they are not able, at the salary of $l,500, to find competent men willing to accept the service, and that when such men have been secured it has often been found impossible to retain them. The service has lost